Remember the list? The quaint old bucket list I made shortly after my 23rd Birthday to ensure I get more out of life and become more proactive and involve myself in new scenarios and potentially remove myself from my comfort zone. I am LOVING IT. Let me refresh your memory by showing you the list again, this time complete with pseudo highschool graffiti.....
Some friends of mine started organising a camping trip a few weeks back, and I naturally jumped on board. I was eager to go proper camping with neither electricity or toilets, in order to see how I handle being out of my physical comfort zone. Now, I'm not exactly a princess. I come from Tom-Boy origins. Sometimes I wear the same clothes AND underwear (turned inside out of course) for two days in a row to work if i randomly stay at Josh's place. I wear 'house clothes' which are torn, food-stained and are invariably made up of tracksuit pants and a t-shirt. One weekend i didn't shower for 48 hours. I even continue eating my lunch if i drop it in the toilet bowl. Wring it out, it's alright! Nah that one's a joke. I swear. The point is, I wanted to see how primal I could really get without being ashamed. I should point out that the one time I went camping in the past (November 2004) was where I met Josh - at Schoolies in Lorne. We had electricity, toilets, showers, music, jaffle irons, even a hammock which i stupidly forgot to bring along this time. Everyone said "Pfft, that's not REAL camping!" to which I swore I would experience one day. But if I hadn't gone, I would never have met Josh and be as happy with him as I am today, over 6 years later! eeeee *heart swell*
Anyway, enough mush! Let's talk about bush...
So off we went on Friday morning. Not only were we all excited to be going camping, we were exponentially excited due to the fact that we were NOT going to work :) Double yayz! We drove up to a place called Cobram. A place where you can walk around with no shirt or shoes, where Ute's are more common than the flies buzzing around your unwashed hair, and where the very best Op-Shops can be found. It is situated 262 km North of Melbourne on the banks of the Murray River. What I somehow failed to realise the whole time I was there was that on the other side of the Murray was New South Wales.. but NOW I know. As do you! So, as I have never driven around these parts, I am deeming this item 16) Road Trip to a new location COMPLETE. You may say "Well obviously if you go camping on item 15, you've gotta road trip it - they are like the same thing!".. wrong. I could easily have set up a tent in my spacious backyard or at the park up the road and become 1 with my dog and cat and learned to live as they. That would be weird. Anyway, the weather forecast was not looking good. Rain and flooding were forecasted. I was worried that my camping trip dream was going to become un-hinged. Luckily we were all invested balls-deep in the plan so we still went for it. While the boys got super-wet and set up ramshackle shelter...
This bug collection was moved onto the back shelf of the car unbeknownst to the driver. When he found my morbid little collection later on, he came back to the camp fire saying how his car was a bit too "Silence of the Lambs" for his liking. Oops. That's all part of my charm. I was only collecting them so I could give some kid a cool present. "Hey little kid, come over here. Aunty Jade's got something for you....." hmmm. I actually forgot to take them home so I don't know what became of them. Back to reality (oops there goes gravity), Nat and I faffed around while the boys made a great shelter so we could start drying fire wood and eventually set up tents. Here's Nat playing with my new umbrella:
Note: this is not how a well managed kitchen should look. Cooking by lantern light was cho subarashii though ^_^! We didn't have much to work with so I made little tin-foil vegie parcels to go with the burgers, and man... they were awesome. I put some Dill in there, and blew some minds, let me tell you. Here's the boys cooking the boigers, just before the 3rd car turned up!
OMG! One camping fantasy I had went all the way back to childhood. See, I used to be obsessed with the 1993 movie "The Sandlot Kids" or as it is called in the US, simply "The Sandlot". You know the one, all those cute little boys playing baseball to a rad 50's soundrack and there's that monster dog and James Earl Jones features in it? Ah, I can see them all now: Smalls, Squints, Benny the Jet, Ham, Yeah Yeah, Timmy & Tommy, and of course Wendy Peffercorn. In one unforgettable scene (to me, they all are) Ham explains to the n00b Smalls what a S'more is. Here is an excerpt from the scene:
Ham Porter: Hey Smalls, you wanna S'more?
Smalls: Some more of what?
Ham Porter: No, do you wanna S'more?
Smalls: I haven't had anything yet, so how can I have some more of nothing?
Ham Porter: You're killing me Smalls! These are s'more's stuff! *motions to the confectionary surrounding him* Alright, now pay attention. First you take the graham, you stick the chocolate on the graham. Then you roast the 'mallow. When the 'mallows flaming... you stick it on the chocolate. Then cover it with the other end. Then you scarf. Kind of messy, but good!
Well, obviously I had to make s'mores! The best part was that while I was making them, Ruari, Stevenz and I had fun quoting the movie to each other. Actually, the best part was the taste :) I couldn't get hold of "Graham Crackers" at such short notice so I got some Arnott's wholemeal cookies instead. The "Aussie equivalent" it seems. I wrapped them in foil and popped them in the embers to melt. Amazing.
Yum. This was not the end of my cooking adventures though, oh no! Stay tuned for more!
Let's jump to the morning after the first night. I was so hung over. I suppose part of this recollection is to outline the things that were uncomfortable about my trip. Going to the toilet was probably the worst for me. There wasn't much in the way of shrubs to hide behind so peeing in the daytime was annoying. You had to pick the perfect spot and keep your eye on camp. If anyone made eye contact while i was peeing.. that would have been just creepy. "Yes, I'm urinating. What of it?" The worst thing was that the further back you went, the more of camp you saw and assumed everyone could see you too! The boys just told me to come swimming and pee in the river. I didn't want to admit that it was the best idea I'd heard all day, but eventually I was 'talked into it'. We were all swimming around and they were like "have you peed yet?" every now and then. Mortified. But really, the current was so strong where we were on the first day I just had to make sure there was no-one downstream of me and it wasn't so bad :) But yes, as you can imagine... AGB's are not great in the bright morning light, having to squat with no cover or balance. I didn't make that mistake twice. After the AGB episode I came back to camp to find Jake and Corey making tea and snags for breakfast. Saints. Absolute saints! They kindly gave me some as my Muesli was looking as appealing as kitty litter at that point! After the heary breakfast we did the only rational thing possible: we drove to town and went op-shopping. Obviously. I bought $11.50 worth of GOLD, but i forgot to take pictures - sorry :)
Back at camp, we decided to go fishing and swimming. Of course, first we needed worms for the rod, so I helped dig for worms, and then in no time it was all three girls elbows deep in mud yelling "I got a BIG ONE!". That's when we noticed this guy and had a bit of a 'girly moment':
Point A: This log is where we left our clothes (and a house key which is gone forever)
Point B: This is out toward the river's current and where we sat on a log doing tumbles into the water.
Point C: The Jumping Tree. This is where we did bomb dives. And this is also where I scraped my tummy and boobs clambering up into the tree looking like a dead rag doll slumped over it apprently.
Point D: Allllll the way back towards camp is where my friend placed my glasses for safe keepings when i did my bomb dive from the tree.
I asked my friend to hold them but she swam all the way back to shore and proceeded to walk for about 3 minutes fully naked until she found an ambiguous enough place to leave my glasses. Needless to say that we searched for ages afterwards shivering and clutching towels and clothes to ourselves. We actually gave up but on the way back to the camp, she said "Oh, a fence! I hung them on this fence!" and there they were. I still don't know why she swam and walked soooo far, it's pretty funny though.
So with the Skinny Dipping challenge complete, there was yet another item I knew i could complete. Fruit challenge! I bought another new fruit to eat. The final one of five. This time....
Amazing! It wasn't a good idea wearing white shorts while eating them, in fact it was a poor choice wearing them all together. I liked the pomegranate, but I got bored of eating it well before I was satisfied. It was like pulling little teeth out of some bitter white gums, but tasted nothing like teeth. I should know. Eew. Ok, so bringing it back around... before the skinny dipping we made out second dinner. Corey and Jake had some pasta ingredients and I had a few gourmet touches to add as well so we ended up with the most gourmet camp pasta ever!
And then naturally we started playing drinking games, namely Kings. Below is a photo of boxhead/drinkbitch. As if it isn't humiliating enough being the slave who gets everyone's drinks, you have to wear a box on your head and almost trip into the fire while doing so...
That was really fun, especially when one of the rules became that we had to talk in European accents until the next Rule card is drawn. There were some interesting sounding British accents out there, that's for sure. I didn't realise Borat lived in London :) Ok so it was after this game that we were charged up enough to go skinny dipping, then danced and sang until around 3.30am when i fell into blissful sober yet exhausted sleep. I was awoken at about 6am when the others went to bed. Glad it wasn't me ;)
On the sad drive home, I had a peanut butter sandwich made with squashed white bread and spread on with the back of a plastic spoon. It was one of the nicest things ever. It was the last stop on my journey back to childhood.
