Tales from an Amateur Camper

I was never a natural camper. I like floors, I'd prefer not to hike to the toilet and I find it slightly disarming being in such intimate living arrangements with not even a solid wall to separate me from a complete stranger snoring two tents away.

Safe to say that I was more of a 5 star hotel room, swanning around in a robe and ordering room service holiday kinda gal. When our good friends invited us to join them on one of their camping adventures, the idea of sleeping on the ground in a tent with two small children did not exactly have me doing cartwheels, but for the sake of my young family and camping keen partner- who I knew were all keen for the adventure- I tried my best to look enthusiastic.

That first camping trip at Neurum Creek Camp near Maleny took me completely out of my comfort zone. Now Neurum Creek has wonderful facilities (something I'd later come to really appreciate!), planned activities for the kids (also a big plus) and even a coffee van which pitched up every morning (almost unheard of), so this was not a bare-bones, fend for yourself type of situation. However our family had overlooked pretty much everything except a tent and sleeping bags. We didn’t have light (we had our phone torches), we didn’t have anything to store our food in and certainly nothing to cook our food on or with. Thank goodness for the pizza van that rocked up on the Friday night!

We absolutely relied on our more clued-up camping friends to get us through that first trip. Incidentally, my number one tip for newbies is to piggy-back onto some friends who know the camping ropes – it will make your life sooooo much easier!

I didn’t sleep (tip no. 2 – pack the earplugs!), I wasn’t a fan of traipsing to the toilet at 2am in the dark and I felt dirty most of the time.

BUT – what I saw was my kids having the time of their lives playing in the dirt, having adventures in the bush nearby, making up games and not once declaring that they were bored. We swam in creeks, we stayed up late playing games, we laughed about the impossibility of showering 3 young kids in a 1m x 1m shower cubicle with only one hook and we lived completely in the moment for the entire weekend.

Ok, so we were ill-equipped, inexperienced, sometimes uncomfortable and a little out-of our-depth, but there was enough there to make us start thinking about where we might go for our next adventure…