To celebrate their 10th anniversary, some friends of ours invited a bunch of people for a couple of nights camping at Araluen. Both Rosie and I worked from home while packing things up and then finished up early, so that we could head off once Ollie got home from school. The weather originally wasn’t great – it was raining on and off all that day, but the forecast said it was clearing and we decided we would go even if there was a bit of rain to get through.
With the van and camper all packed up we headed through Queanbeyan towards Bungendore and Braidwood. There was a little rain on the way, but we had a pretty good run and got to camp around 5.30pm. After a quick setup we sat down with our friends that had been there all day and set up a fire. More friends arrived, with the last arriving around 10.30pm having come down from Newcastle. All up there were 11 people in our group, including us.
That evening we enjoyed some pulled pork rolls with coleslaw, and mostly just sat around the fire drinking some beer and wine and enjoying everyone’s company. One of our friends had tried his hand at a ‘snackle box’ – it worked out very well. We were up quite late, with the last couple of people going to bed around 5am. I’m told that one of those people ended up having a bit of a spew that night and had to spend the night in their car to avoid disturbing their partner, but that may be just a rumor.
We weren’t the best parents this trip – Ollie spent a lot of time in the camper with his Nintendo Switch playing Pokémon. But that’s what he wanted to do and we did get him out and about looking for bugs, going on missions around the campsite and taking Reggie (the dog) to the river to have a look for treasure.
The next morning was a bit rough for a lot of us. We sat around reading and crafting, with more beers and drinks making an appearance around lunchtime. We found out that our friends new campervan had stopped powering their fridge. I quickly discovered they had been powering the fridge from the car battery, not the house battery in the camper. No real harm done though, as we used our jump starter pack to start the van, and I had an 12v extension cord that let the fridge be powered by the house battery.
Later that afternoon we headed to a deeper area of the creek for a bit of a dip. The water wasn’t that cold, so most of us even made it into the water.
Back at camp it was discovered that Rosie had access to some questionable ‘novels’ on her Kindle account, so we downloaded a few of these. I was elected (told) to read them out, with the group deciding what accent I had to attempt for any characters. An Indian Zeus anyone?
As more drinks came out and the night went on, we played a bit of Cards Against Humanity and Numbers, then went back to the book reading to get through to a particular part of the story. After that a lot of people went to bed early. I was the last to bed, but as soon as laid down we heard rustling coming from the rubbish bag of our friends. Turned out a fox was trying to get into the food and rubbish – it was hilarious hearing our friends leaping from their campervan and chasing this fox away at least three times that night.
The next morning we all packed up at varying speeds, and slowly headed off. Our pack up was pretty slow and steady. We really didn’t want to go back to the real world after such a great weekend. There was talk about staying another night, but missing work and school wasn’t on the cards. Next time we’ll try to stay a day or two longer, as this was just the break we needed.
A big thank you to everyone that we camped with. We had a magnificent time and both myself and Rosie count it as one of the nicest camping weekends we’ve had in a very long time.
Boring technical stuff
The van has developed a noisy humming noise at speed. It’s not tyres as the tyre shop confirmed they were fine the Thursday before we headed off, but it sounds exactly like mud terrain tyres while driving. The tyre place mechanic said it might be a wheel bearing or other drivetrain component, but wasn’t able to be more specific than that (real helpful right?).
I figured the noise wasn’t getting any worse and there didn’t seem to be any vibration or power loss, so we were probably okay. And we got there and back without any problem. But it’s never fun when a vehicle starts to make unusual noises. My choice is always to try and find the problem as soon as possible, while Rosie has been known to just crank up the stereo to drown out unusual noises.
It was good preparation to have the jump starter kit and 12v extension cord in the van. We’ve learnt to be fairly self-sufficient for things like that over the years and it does come in handy when something goes wrong with our gear and the gear of the people we’re camping with.
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