Camping Out Bush

This weekend just gone (3rd - 5th March) i went camping with Dina Hunter, Luke Nowell and Elyse Dickson. It was fun. We didn't do much, coz there wasn't much to do but it was nice just to get away from everything and relax. It's amazing how dependant on business we can become. I guess the only thing we couldn't get away from were our mobile phones, despite the fact we weren't even in reception!

After departing from our families and saying our goodbyes, we trekked our way out to a camp site area called Bendeela, which is just out of Kangaroo Valley. It's really nice and my family would often camp there when we lived in Bowral. So i gave Dina a running commentary on the town i called home for 6 years. On the way home, we drove past my old high school and it was a little odd seeing it for the first time in 6 or so years.

Anyway we got to camping at about 9:30/10pm and proceeded to set up our tents with our car headlights on. Poles and tents galore, no instructions! We managed to set ourselves up well enough to be able to sleep (although our tent was more of a teepee rather than a tent tehehe...).

At about 12:30/1am we all climbed into our sleeping bags and nodded off.

I hadn't really slept well that night due to excess noise from the 'f'ing people (as that was all their vocab seemed to consist of) and therefore i woke up pretty darn early so at 8:30am, like a little kid who needs other people to be awake with them to be happy, i started playing all the song on my phone so that my roomie would wake up. And wake up she did, to my ring tone, inspector gadget.

After i played through all of my tunes, including the peaceful wind chimes, i got outta bed and folded all the window flaps up to let the cool morning air in. This seemed to wake the rest of the camp up and before long we were all seated around the table having a bite to eat for breakfast! Mind you, breakfast was at about 11:00am. We also made friends with Professor Plum and Reverend Green (two ducks with purple and green wings).

When breakfast was done, all four of us headed up to the toilet block (no showers) and got our first glimspe of the grottiness of the bathroom. Honestly, we might as well have just dug holes in the ground and it could possibly have been more hygenic than these were!!! Used sanitary napkins on the ground, toilet paper everywhere, one lady even told the story of one day coming in only to find the sink filled with faeces! The smell of them was ghastly. It reminded me that not all people are clean or hygenic people and don't respect property that isn't theirs. I was going to spare you the details, but you'd never have got the idea!!! You still really haven't!!!

After we had freshened up (although how i can say that is beyond me), we made a quick stop at the tents, and then headed to the water. Since the last time i visited the area (about 2000) the water level has dropped significantly, tree stumps are even visible above the water now. So we blew up our floatie (little boat raft thing) and jumped in. It was so nice especially on such a scorcher of a day.

Luke found a couple of trees high enough to jump into the water. Funnily enough, the water did actually get quite deep. We acquainted ourselves with some little boys and girls who thought they were the coolest. We all got out for a bit and then got back in and were bombarded by scouts. We watched as they canoed around us, laughing every now and then at their boats tipping over. Although we soon caught on and realised that it must've been part of their activities to tip their boats because before we knew, everyone's boats were tipping over. It wasn't quite as fun after that, so we got out and headed back to camp for some lunchtime tucker.
Between lunch and dinner, nothing happened. It was a quiet afternoon where Luke and Elyse slept and Dina and myself entertained ourselves, mostly just lying around in the blow up boat, chatting, coking and snacking with a bit of music playing in the car.

One of the highlights of our time at Bendeela was joinging in with the waving of fellow campers. It seems to be the customary thing to do to wave at another camper, there is some kind of mutual understanding. So our afternoon also consisted of waving to the people driving by, especially the canoe men (otherwise known as camoe nen in my fit of dyslexia)

Just before it got dark, we decided to cook dinner, even though we weren't really hungry, we decided it would be better to cook in the daylight rather than in the dark. So we turned on the gas, we lit the burners and BOOM the flame from the end burner jumped to the gas hose! We quickly turned the gas off and then the burner and blew out the flame. After several more attempts, even with the gas only turned on a little bit, we had to ditch all efforts and put it down to a leak in the hose.

That night, we ate cold meat sandwiches because we couldn't cook our meat on the bbq. I was very sad. After dinner us girls decided to play some games so we started with Panic. Luke went off for a wander while we played. It was a fun game, a bit racist ie. name 5 things that are white. There were other fun questions like name 5 tools and 5 pies. After a game won by Elyse, we started making our own up, always a good time killer! It wasn't til the next morning that we found the 5 things starting with M card. We didn't really need it though, we only played two games of Panic! It started to get very dark and we started to get a little anxious about our friend. After trying to amuse ourselves for a little while longer, telling non existent sickle and axe man tales, we all turned in for the night. Five minutes later we heard Luke stumble back into camp confessing that he had fallen asleep by the lake and was freezing cold!

As we drifted off to sleep, a friendly wombat came to join us (outside the tent!) and we could hear him munching on some grass, pretty soon we were sleeping!

The next morning (Sunday, if you've lost track) we packed up shop, squeezed tents into bags, rested for a spell, and drove on home.

It was a very lovely, peaceful and relaxing weekend!

Tink xoxo