Bushwalk Australia

Hi,

Hi everyone, I'm trying to find information about old Paddy Pallin sleeping bags and any help would be greatly appreciated.

The ones I have are Bimberi, Kiandra, Hotham. They have tags for Gore Dryloft, some have goretex and pertex tags.

I'm trying to find out how old they are and how much down is in them but I'm assuming they are at least a few decades old.

I thought I would post here on the off chance that someone has come across these sleeping bags in the past

Thankyou
Regards
Andrew

I remember the Hotham and Bimberi models being around when I started bushwalking and looking at gear 1989-90ish, but I think it was a long running range so yours could be older or newer than that. The Paddymade label is older I think.

If I recall correctly, which is somewhat doubtful, the Hotham was semi-rectangular, around 700g fill and had a cotton inner to appease traditionalists who didn't like the new fangled synthetic materials. The Bimberi was mummy shaped with maybe 550g fill. Both were what Paddy's called Grade 3 (before standardised temperature ratings), ie. 3 season, -3°C ish.

But I could be wrong and/or the same names could have been given to different models over the years.

How old is relative to ones experience.

The first Hotham that I saw was around 1970 and was a well used example owned by a friend. It had a 100% cotton/japara shell. My guesstimate of fill weight of that bag, presuming a lower than current loft down, would be at least 700g.

Your examples are way more recent than that that, as evidenced by the high tech (compared to japara) shell fabrics.

It shouldn't be hard to find out when Paddy started using Dryloft and that knowledge will narrow your time window.

I had a Bimberi at one stage, a bit earlier than the DryLoft model. About 300/350 grams of 750/800FP down, a summer weight Alpine bag and specifications kept changing so different from one year to the next. I had it topped up with an extra 100 grams of down by Andrew King when he was based in Melbourne city in Hardware Lane
Mine was Olive Drab in colour as Paddys were trying to crack the army market for a while

I found this ad when looking through an old Wild magazine, if that helps. The magazine is dated 1987. No idea if your bags come before or after that date, and no info on the Hotham or Kiandra models sorry.