Camping Down Under

(My friend [and internet grandfather] UnaBubba tells of a school sponsored camping trip with his son in his native Australia. Good times.)

Well, it had to be done, it seems.

My son's school decided to hold a "Camp Out", so that boys and their dads could "bond" better. As it's a school with separate campuses for boys and girls but non-discriminatory, parents and siblings were encouraged to attend.

So, we borrowed a 6 man tent from a friend who owns a business that manufactures 4WD camping accessories (like awnings that can be mounted to the roof rack of your vehicle). It's a spacious thing, with good headroom.

The camp site was a sports oval at the corresponding girls' school campus. Everything was going well until the school groundsman and the school bursar turned up and ordered all vehicles off the verge of the oval and into the hardstand carpark about 800 metres away from the campsite. That took all powered camping devices that run off vehicle electrical systems, out of the mix. It also meant that our awning had to be struck and removed from the campsite. Fine, we still had the tent.

Darkness falls. It's an almost moonless night, so there's not a lot of visibility to be had. Then it was decreed that the tents were not to be pitched on the well-grassed, level, playing surface of the oval, but were to be removed to the sloping ground away from the edge of the oval. We had to move our 6 man tent about 30 metres. It's for the kids... it's OK. The site seems reasonably comfortable, though certainly inferior to the first choice, as it's on angle of about 10-15 degrees.

The dinner that was catered for us ($15/head) was great, apart from the potatoes that somehow managed to avoid the cooking process almost completely. They certainly had time to be cooked, as there was a substantial hiatus between when the meats were cooked and when they were served (enough time to drop to room temperature, it seems). Roasted meats, still in the grease in which they were simmered. Dessert was better... pavlova and cream or cream and pavlova... just the shot for diabetics and the health conscious. A great big sugar rush for the kids, too... just before bedtime.

Night games, to wear the kids out, then bedtime at 9pm. Light rain at 9:30. More rain at 10pm. A heavy shower at midnight. A break... 2 inches of rain in half an hour, at 2am. This is a tropical storm, that manifests as a line of severe thunderstorms more than 800 miles in length, moving northeasterly at about 55 miles/hr. We are in the path of this maelstrom of wind and water.

When it hits we are secure in the knowledge that I have done as well as I can to secure the tent, with many 12" x 3/8" pent pegs driven into the firm soil. I close the tent fly up, to keep the rain out. It works very well. No water enters the tent, from any point above ankle height.

Not willing to get up and trudge half a mile with tent and stuff in driving rain, with 2 small kids, at 2am, we endure it. 2 inches of rain in 30 minutes is a lot of water, and it needs somewhere to go, fast. That much water off the roughly 6 acres of a cricket oval means that the drainage system comes into play and a cascade leaves the edge of the oval with a vengeance.

You'll never guess what the designated camp ground has become, by this time. 300 people, in tents, in pouring rain, in the path of a shallow river of water that is pouring away from a large area that naturally percolates water through 6 - 18 inches of perfectly draining soil and sheds it down the nearest hill. The tents are all pitched on this slope and each one becomes a small dam across the aforementioned torrent.

None of the trees or heavy branches that come down in the storm actually hit our tent, as Daddy has been careful to site his tent out of the fall line of any major trees. This is a "Good Thing". Others are not so lucky, with one tent being bisected by a tree trunk around 16in in diameter. The three occupants were visiting the toilet block when it fell.

The scene is... interesting. The groundsman and the bursar are nowhere to be seen, while we sit in tents that mostly have "waterproof" ** floors,with belongings stacked on inflatable mattresses and kids stumbling about in the dark.

** Waterproof seems to mean that ground moisture won't be much of a problem while the tent is in use. It doesn't anticipate 2-3 inches of water running across sloping ground, I assume.

The wind abates but the rain persists. It's a warm night so the 4 of us (me, wife, 5yo son, 3yo daughter) huddle together on a queen-sized inflatable mattress until daybreak. Sleep, like failure, is not an option. Some hardy souls have packed up their gear and fled, vowing to return for abandoned tents in the morning.

4:45 and I go and get the SUV, bringing it down to the campsite. I am wet, tired and angry.

The headmaster and the groundsman (The bursar must still be supervising the peeling of grapes, for his petit dejeuner?) appear out of nowhere, telling me I cannot drive across the wet ground of the campsite to load up our gear and my family, to go somewhere dry. The ensuing discussion starts out fairly cordially, with an explanation about how we have been in a relatively dire position for most of the night, while they have presumably spent the night in warm beds and secure houses. It ends with suggestions that entail the headmaster removing his person from my presence, with all possible haste. He leaves me alone and goes to the next vehicle that arrives, to conduct what appears to an almost identical conversation with that driver.

I help out with a few other campers' tents, after I've sorted mine out. Fellow sufferers are welcome to my charity, anytime. Feeling a tad bedraggled, we make it home at 7:30am, and set to pitching a wet tent in our garage then hosing it down, to get all of the storm debris off it. We eat the breakfast we were to cook on the inadequate barbecue facilities at the school, and go to bed for a few hours sleep.

The tent fly will be hung up and cleaned later today. I'm unsure whether the discussion with the headmaster will prejudice my son's ongoing education. It is unlikely that camping will be high on the priority list of fun things to do, for a while.

I now remember why my motto, in relation to camping, is: "If It Ain't 5 Star Then It Ain't A Good Campground."

Of course, I am also reminded that the most memorable experiences of childhood, for most people, are the camping adventures. I can't imagine why they're so memorable.