Pateman's Adventure Holiday 2- Carry on Camping

To anyone who has ever accused me of having a passing resemblance to Stan Laurel, I look at this photo and think "fair enough". The expression I am going for is comic perplexity as we discovered a lonely thong (AKA flip flop) drifting mysteriously at Ladies well. This was our first "ooh that's pretty "stop on our long awaited camping trip with John and Lisa. We had all approached the trip with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Tina and I, as you may well know ,are not seasoned campers. Lisa was equally anxious that we would have a nice time. John's trepidation was born out of wondering whether I was as inept at camping as I was at sailing. Let's just say none of us were let down.


Key concern was the weather. We are heading rapidly towards winter over here and our destination, Barrington Tops national Park, is pretty high and pretty cold but as you can see below the sun was battling through and Tina was warm enough with a son to cuddle and her new elephant grey "slob suit" to keep her warm.


After "Stan" had read the map wrong, we made a detour up Mount Allyn admired the views and descended rapidly to make our way to the campsite before nightfall. The campsite itself (unimaginatively titled "The lease") exceeded our expectations as we were relieved to find that Pit toilets and washing in the river was not to be. Nightfall was approaching so it was all hands on deck to put the tents up. Anybody who might think that Jessica's ability to knock pegs in was limited and this is a cosmetic photo shot would be absolutely right. (well, they helped a bit!!)


Work out the way. It was time to play. Now as I said the lease was better than expected and came equipped with swings, slides and climbing apparatus but after the novelty of that had worn off it was time to get the logbarrow out. Let me introduce the children present. Jessica of course, then there was Emily (John and Lisa's daughter and Jessica's make-up buddy), In the barrow with Alex was Cameron, and finallyTom, who belonged to Andrew and Michelle ,
(close neighbours of John and Lisa's) who we were meeting for the first time and gave us some more good people to get to know and some testosterone filled play for Alex. The little girl was Kira. We had no idea who she was but we seemed to partly adopt her over the weekend. She appeared from nowhere, demanding her turns and then came back to us at ten minute intervals asking if we'd cooked any marshmallows for her. No, come back later, was the calm, often repeated reply.


She came back later. Joining all the other children who all absolutely loved burning marshmallows, hated the taste and proceeded to force feed the adults with their charcoal covered delicacies. Here sit Andrew, John and myself after consuming several of these, some wine, fine barbecue food and a beer or three (or four in my case). The fire did a fine job of keeping us warm and we were entertained by a clear starlit night, brush tailed possums getting tooth decay from marshmallow remnants and Lisa's damper bread which was absolutely.......
cooked. Tina would loved to have brought her guitar but John and Lisa had insisted there wasn't room for it!


The morning after the night before and all was well at camp. The tents were dry, the fire was lit again and breakfast was a well catered civilised affair. Time to strike camp and re-stock the firewood. This is where I proved to Andrew as well as John that I have a high inept rating when it comes to "bloky" things. He watched me make five pathetic indentations into a log before taking over and making five instant splits. I smiled admiringly, relegated myself again to logbarrow pushing and it was almost time to go.


But not before I, along with the younger half of my family managed to mess up one more time. Down below the campsite was the Patterson river and there it was that John, Andrew, Emily, Cameron and Tom (Cameron's older brother a good playmate for Alex and a fine soccer player)
leaped from log to log and tree to tree athletically to get from bank to bank. Here I am below, getting in the way of the photo as I decide whether I dare cross the six inch gap to the next stone.


I was not the first to fall in though that was Jessica's acheivement. I was not the second either that was Alex's acheivement. The moral is that approaching something too tentatively or carefully is not always the best way but has good comedy value. Credit to Jess and Alex who both saw the funny side of their dunking and with clothes well and truly packed suffered wet bottoms for the next few hours without complaint. Here Jessica and I, slowly but surely made our way back across the river. All this time Lisa, Tina and Michelle just enjoyed the show and had a good chat.


A great weekend was almost marred at our lunch stop as Cameron's head argued with a lump of concrete but first aid was swift. Meanwhile I was left in charge of the sausages which I didn't mess up and everyone went home tired but happy. Tiredness reflected in the fact that Tina and I were practically dribbling on the Upholstery during the final leg of the drive. We want to camp at the beach next time. Although John may be thinking "What next time?"