Ahhhh Camping…

It’s been a while since we abandoned all walls and swapped them for canvas (or more accurately, nylon, but you know what I mean). It’s been 11 years to be exact, since our last family camping trip. Now, I’m no stranger to camping, in fact our very first foray into the great outdoors was to a non-powered campsite with no amenities block. Yes, you heard right. We had to walk up a hill and do our business… in a hole. Talk about a baptism of fire. I was sure I’d hate its guts but somehow, throwing jaffle irons in the fire, making damper with the kids and tripping over wombats in the morning was actually fun. Who knew? It even rained! 

But now, since the long hiatus, it’s a little harder to get my head around the whole idea of sleeping outside. 

We packed ridiculously lightly (read: we forgot A LOT of things) and about halfway to our destination I had the sad realisation that I’d forgotten to bring my comfy, thick foam mattress. What a bummer! Ross, since walking the Kokoda Track last year & being very au fait with roughing it, had opted to bring his self inflating number. “Never mind, I thought, I’ll just pop into the camping shop and get a cheap airbed”. Little did I realise, it was ANZAC Day, and for the first time in absolute years, the shops were shutting ALL day. I’d have to hope someone had a spare. 

As it turned out, one of our friends had the foresight to imagine some idiot might forget their mattress, and he’d packed a couple of extras. 

Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but I use the term ‘mattress’ quite loosely. It looked like he was handing me a thick towel. “Oh, it’s self-inflating, don’t worry”, he assured me. I opened the valve as instructed and watched with anticipation as…nothing really changed. When I heard the word ‘inflating’ I’d envisaged something that could double as a rapid-riding vessel in the local river. Rather, this “mattress” inflated like a small blister on your toe. Not much. 

With the sun well and truly set and it nearly time to try my new bed out, I popped into the tent to grab my toothbrush and what I thought was toothpaste, but due to lack of a light (did I mention we forgot a lot of things?) I’d grabbed the antiseptic cream and had squeezed a generous amount on my brush. Only seconds before launching into my brushing routine, and only because I was alerted by the absence of minty aroma. did I pull the pin and investigate what non-toothpaste-y substance I had seized instead. That was a close one. 

Now pyjama’d up, I shimmied under the covers and realised that gentle slope the tent had been erected on, now felt somewhat like a ramp. Fitful dreams of clinging to the side of a mountain punctuated my sleep and the self-inflating hoax-fest of a mattress now felt like a slab of plywood - my hips and shoulders feeling every rigid inch of it. Throw in a mysteriously damp pillow and a cacophonous crack-of-dawn bird orchestra and let’s face it, it was a sleep from hell. 

Ahhhh camping…