The Australia Diaries

Camping – March 9th to March 11th

And so to camping. The two and a half hour train journey from Sydney to Newcastle affords the traveller some beautiful views of the “bush”, – a word seemingly used to describe any area that is remotely rustic- expansive lakes and rolling hills, thick with forest. No one on the train appears to be as excited about this as I am, least of all the two young Aussie guys eating pie and ketchup in the seats across from me. Similarly, my wide-eyed gaping-mouthed reaction to the sight of a pelican floating nonchalantly along the smooth surface of a passing lake is met by quizzical, ever so slightly worried expressions from my fellow passengers. I put my music in my ears and do my best to look native.

Fast forward three hours I fill mainly with packing, eating sweet potato, and being lovingly attacked by a small dog called snowy, and Meryl, partner Graeme, and I are sitting in his immense crimson 4WD, trailer in tow, awaiting Grem’s thirteen year old daughter Winnie and her friend Maddy. The door opens and the two pile in, all perfect hair and nails, and we are off.

Questions to the girls about school are met with grunts or whines of various pitches, suggesting that ten thousand miles makes no difference to the behaviour of those who are thirteen. A two-hour drive passes in a stream of car games and we arrive at the rather forbiddingly named ‘Treachery’ camp. I can only assume that walking round and round the camp for an hour looking at possible pitches is an Aussie tradition, for this is what we proceed to do, before I decide to take things into my own hands and choose a spot under cover of the gnarled trees of the drained billabong. The day winds away pleasantly enough, Grem and Meryl pitching the tent (with a good degree of assistance) and cooking dinner, Winnie and Maddy communicating only by raising their eyebrows at varying degrees, and the sun dying away behind the huge sand dune that borders the camp on one side and gives way to the Pacific.

Saturday. Today I met Mr Australia, not a rare breed, but certainly an exciting find. This particular brand of Southern Hemispheric human is usually short, stubbly, and built like a brick shit house. This particular one was named Southy the night watchman, as he informed me three times during our decidedly one-sided conversation. After living for three years in a tent, Southy tells me that he arrived at Treachery and, after shouting at some kids one night, was offered a job. He now lives in a 24-foot caravan with an annexe and carries a very beautiful creeping elm stick, with an impossibly perfect coiled middle section, that props him up when he’s had a few too many beers, which he tells me happens most nights. After going into detail about the riots and police busts that happen some weekends, he advises me to keep my eyes well peeled for snakes as there are hundreds of the buggers about, and departs. Never have I felt less reassured of my safety in my life.

The rest of the day is concerned mainly with the beach, a vast stretch of velvet soft sand and crashing waves, backed by rolling green and white sand dunes and bordered by jutting, rocky headland. Three islands sit mistily some way off shore, as if to remind you, as if you had any doubt, that you are a long way from Blighty now. Swimming at this bay is more like a workout than a pastime, as the waves collapse from great heights all around, and the strong current moves and mutates around my legs. The water, though, is clear and not cold, and the swimming is refreshing and pleasantly shark-free. Being English, and naive, I expect to see one every time I surface from a brief dive to the sandy bed.

At lunch, I join a board game with the girls which leaves me with the disastrous knowledge that Winnie thought Greenland was a continent, before we head to a different bay, ten minutes drive down a dusty track away. Winnie and Maddy play (for the first time like the children they are) in the sea, making up dance routines and songs. The water here is ridiculously clear, tropical looking and just the right temperature, the coastline that stretches off up the left hand side of my vision unlike anything I have seen before- green, and mountainous, with white bays and rocky outcrops and miles and miles of forest. On the way back, the girls partake with a worrying seriousness in my challenge to stay completely silent until we get back to the tent. This game ends in the both charging to touch the tent first, and is followed by a fierce argument over who actually achieved this. As promised, I award them both twenty cents and this seems to settle the matter.

My excitement over several sightings of the alarmingly prehistoric looking iguanas, or ‘go-annas’ as Grem says, is met with amusement. I take a silly amount of photos of these huge and fascinatingly alien creatures as one raids a neighbouring camp (we do not help, they were very noisy last night) and another climbs a tree, something even Grem hasn’t seen happen before.

The evening is passed warmly by the fire and ends with an early night. Lying and listening to Van Morrison covers sung by a group across the billabong I realise that all the best musicians are to be found by camp fires with voices that go flat every now and then, but fingers that always find the right strings in the end, and twenty friends to help them sing in the high parts.

Sun-kissed for the first time in months, I feel intensely lucky for a moment. A good start to an Aussie experience, I think to myself, secretly looking forward to being woken in what will undoubtedly be a sunny morning by the laugh of one hundred kookaburras.