Camping - II - frustration and transportation.
Posted 1 year ago at 9:20 am. 0 comments
On Saturday morning I awoke with a smile. I’d had a few undoubtedly camping related dreams, which only intensified my excitement. I’d asked mum to wake Nathan and I up early , but because I was so eager (like a kid on Christmas, honestly it was kind of embarassing), I beat her to the punch, lying awake and watching the boy, playing with his hair until he woke.
I love mum’s pancakes. I have the recipe, and I’ve tried time and time again to make them, but they’re never quite right. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still fantastic pancakes, but.. they’re just not the same. Like spaghetti on toast (she uses just enough butter, salt and pepper, and if I’m reaaally lucky she cuts each piece up into nine rough squares) and milo (I don’t know what she does there but it’s awesome) - she just manages to add something I can’t quite figure out. She’d probably wax lyrical about a mothers love and all that stuff, and she might be right, but I really can’t go past them. I fancy myself as a fairly reasonable cook, and lord knows she’s somewhat useless with normal cooking, but there’s something very special about her breakfasts - and her butterscotch pudding. She’s definitely improved since the days of Steak, Mashed Pumpkin, Mashed Potato and Peas, Steak, Mashed Pumpkin MashedPotato andpeas steakmashedpumpkingmashedpotatoandpeas EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR YEARS - but I reckon I’m better.
I digress. We woke up, got dressed and wandered bleary eyed into the kitchen, where she’d already started getting everything prepared for a sumptuous pancake feast.
This was apparently not as appealing to Ashley as it was to the rest of us. Just after Scott arrived and flopped down into one of her recliners, I woke Ashley gently, murmuring things about piles of delicious fluffy breakfast goodness - his response was a half asleep grumble, accompanied by a few mis-directed swats. I mithered him until he finally opened his eyes, yet he remained vaguely unenthused by the prospect of warm delicious goodness, even when he’d relented and joined us at the table.
After filling my face, I realised that Tom hadn’t shown up and after a panicked phone call (me to him, obviously), he revealed that he was already in Caboolture. Never to be outdone, I was inspired to get our stuff together and we finally got our semblance of a convoy on the road.
On the trip I decided to share something with Nathan that I usually only do in private. I can’t be certain whether he found it highly irritating or somewhat cute, but it made me really realise that we’ve crossed into unfamiliar territory - scary stuff. I spent most of the trip skipping through songs and absentmindedly memorizing his profile, which turned out to be a very satisfying method of passing time. I eventually settled on Tool, and we had a brief singalong before stopping in at conondale for some ice, toothbrushes, and oil.
If you could all please imagine some kind of ominous, eerie music here, that’d be fantastic.
We spent a good minute drooling over an amazing smell, which upon enquiry turned out to be “Just me roast chooks”, and then piled into our respective cars. Nathan had put some oil in his, so when we started smelling that distinctive, burnt oil smell I thought nothing of it.
The road to Charlie Morelan Reserve was a 4.5km path of dust, loose dark gravel and a “traffic hazard”, which was actually a barely 1m by 1m pile of orange mesh on the roadside. To be honest, I felt that the road itself was more of a hazard, but who am I to judge.
As we drove over the cattle grid and into the campsite, a place that I haven’t visited for forever but was still so familiar, memories of chasing birds, splashing around in the murky water, burning marshmallows and going on long walks at night with mum unburied themselves and I reminisced, not noticing that the car was smoking and the burnt oil smell was now at an overpowering level. When we came to a stop, Nathan leap out of the car, and popped the bonnet. The rest of us surveyed the area critically, trying to decide on the perfect spot to unload and set up camp.