Chapter 6: Our first night camping.
Welcome to the Nundub Country Club! We hope you enjoy your stay.
We arrived at Nundubbermere at about 3.30pm and opened the front gate feeling very excited. 400 acres to roam wild and free on! First though, we had to find a spot to set up camp before it got dark. The obvious place, and indeed the only flattish area was near the dwelling, but when it and the caravan came into view our giddy excitement stalled a little. It looked like the whole area had been bombed. The previous owner’s son had partially dismantled the building, taken the roof off, leaving piles of metal, tumble weeds of insulation, broken concrete blocks and glass. The caravan was still there, but this was not really a bonus – it smelt bad, like old potatoes, and there was an ochre coloured stain on the walls. On the floor, honeycomb chunks of foam from seat cushions wobbled around, looking for somewhere to hide. A cupboard door hung lopsidedly off one hinge and the mattress lay diagonally - should it stay or should it go now? It seemed like an inordinate amount of destruction, as if the joint had been trashed, and radiated an angry ‘Go Away’ vibe.
Fine by us. We got back in the car and headed north, slowly. The trailer squeaked and rattled along behind us. I mentioned something about needing to find a spot pretty darn quickly before it got dark. Smash moved up into second gear and took off up a track we hadn’t tried before – a short cut to the top, supposedly. As mentioned, there are many, many tracks on this block of land, used partly as the four-wheel-drive racetrack, but also, it became apparent, as timber cutting trails. At one point, we were jolting along when all of a sudden, the trail ended at a giant sawn-off ironbark trunk. With no way around, we realised we’d have to back out, which is when we found out how hard it is to reverse a heavily laden trailer on a slope in the bush. Amazingly hard. I helped by pointing out where Smash was going wrong. Smash invited me to have a go myself seeing as I knew so much. I got into the driver’s seat and got a bit of a jack knife thing going on. I mentioned how funny it would be if we got lost in the bush on our first night, then checked my watch. 4.15pm. Finally, after a 17-point turn and quite a few snapped saplings, we got back on a better track and headed up to the top. That was where the view was, after all. Why not camp up there? Then the trail was sending us back down again, in a north-easterly direction, according to the compass. How many bloody tracks were there? We wondered this aloud a few times, each time sounding less jolly.
Up ahead, a fallen branch blocked our way. Leave it to me, I said, reaching for my reciprocating saw. Unfortunately, the branch was Ironbark, and before long the saw blade was smokin’ hot. So hot in fact, it bent easily, yet wouldn’t come out of the log. After manhandling it for a while I looked back at the car for assistance. Smash was squinting at his compass, turning it around and around. I left the saw jammed in the log and grabbed the end of the branch to see if I could snap it, or at least release the saw.
‘Just shove it back,’ Smash called helpfully.
I dragged the branch back, walking backwards, then slipped down underneath it, got splinters, got up, got the shits. 4.30pm.
Smash came and gave me a hand, but even with the two of us straining very, very hard, we couldn’t snap the ironbark branch and realised, we’d have to go back and try another track.
‘We need to buy a chain saw,’ Smash decided, doing another seventeen-point turn.
Back we trundled, taking another track when the opportunity arose. This one was particularly rocky. At some points the trailer let out a screeching, pained noise. I worried about getting scratches on the hired ute. We travelled down into another gorge then headed up, tyres skidding, then we were slipping back. Smash got out and put the hubs on for four-wheel-drive and I took over driving while he navigated with the compass, not that we had much say in the matter of which direction to take. Another log appeared; this time I thought I’d just go over it. Time was running out and what was the point in having a four-wheel drive if you didn’t do some four wheelin? The car went over nicely, but the trailer got stuck and wanted to drag the log along with us. I got out to…do something and Smash took over driving. When he accelerated, the trailer reared up and crashed down. 5pm.
Eventually we connected up with a familiar looking track (recognising the wrecked Mahindra in the bottom of the gully) and emerged out onto the ridge. So beautiful. Yeah, yeah, beautiful, but gosh that sun was going down fast, so we headed along the ridge to try and find some flat ground. By this point I was suggesting we just set up something temporary, for one night. Maybe sleep in the car. Smash was appalled by the idea. He hadn’t been in training his entire life for this moment only to give in at the first hill. Further along we saw a huge Kurrajong tree with some relatively flat land around it. Relieved, we stopped and got out and spent about five seconds grimacing in the icy cold wind then decided we should look for somewhere more sheltered. Like down the hill.
I wanted a glass of wine. I made a snippy comment about how we probably should’ve left Brisbane earlier, like I’d suggested. Smash moved into third gear and the truck careened off down the very steep hillside. I cracked my temple on the hand grip and did some fierce passenger braking on the floor of the car, rearing out of my seat. So very rough. Behind us, the trailer seemed in a panic – wait for me, slow down!
No one said anything for the rest of the drive down the hill, except for Schultzy, who was getting worried about dinner time. 5.15pm. Goose stared patiently, if a little blindly, at me. So trusting.
When we got to the base of that hill, Smash asked me where I wanted to camp, in a tone that inferred I’d been too fussy about all the many, many other options we’d seen so far. I mentioned my pressing need for a glass of wine, and off we sped again, all the way back down to where we’d started. Smash juddered to a halt near the caravan and jumped out, gesticulated to a gently sloping area twenty metres over. The dogs jumped out of the car and went to wee and explore; Smash and I headed straight to the trailer to unpack the Esky. With a glass of wine only minutes away, I relaxed, and felt a bit bad for being so snippy. Then Smash pulled the bottle out and we both stared in horror. The bottle was sheared off at the base, wine decanted to the bottom of the esky, now swooshing around with the dog’s meat. I thought about siphoning the wine off into a bucket and probably would’ve if there hadn’t been blood swirling around in it. I scrambled through our cargo in the trailer. All the wine bottles were broken…but worse was to come.
Just kidding. As if anything could be worse than no wine. I made a whimpering noise, not unlike Schultzy’s.
I don’t remember the rest of that night. Trauma, no doubt. I have no photos to jog my memory, don’t know what we ate, who visited, what we did, who put the tent up, (Smash, at a guess). When I got up in the morning, I took a photo of our ‘camp site’. It looks like we pulled up, threw everything off the trailer then ran away.
I sat down in the only unpacked camping chair (facing away from the caravan bomb site) to enjoy the quiet. Only it wasn’t quiet – the sounds were just different without the background rumble of traffic. Birdsong – some high and long, some chattering, cawing, warbling, whistling – so many different calls as they all welcomed the day. Trees whispered to each other in the dense bush on the eastern side. In my search to articulate the sound of wind in the trees and the rustling of leaves, I discovered the word ‘psithurism’ (with a silent p). What a great word; just saying it feels good, as if you are joining in on the trees’ conversation. A small plane passed, very, very high in the sky, barely audible. A zipper under pressure opened as the dogs nosed their way out of the tent to come and join me. Amazing how loud that zipper sounded! I gave the pups a morning cuddle and set about finding everything I needed to make tea.
We had a busy day. There’s a lot to do when you camp with no water supply, power or sanitation, a lot of time spent existing and tending to bodily functions and needs. The books stayed in our back packs, hygiene took a back seat. Perhaps a tad optimistically, we’d invited everyone we knew in Nundub for a Tex Mex feast that night, so after getting the tents up and sorting out the kitchen, the rest of the afternoon was spent cooking while Smash made a quick dash to town for beverages. By eight I was exhausted and a little drunk, having overcompensated for the night before. I went to bed fully dressed and in the morning found chunks of guacamole on my scarf and chilli sauce smears on my pillow. Who cared!? We were camping! That feeling lasted until about lunchtime, when I realised I badly, desperately needed a bath of some kind.
The camp site. A ways to go in getting properly set up.
