Nat Locke: the Easter trip that put me off camping forever

With the Easter long weekend well and truly upon us, I have been reminiscing about Easters past, and the trip that stands out to me is the one that put me off camping forever.

When I was a student in Melbourne, a bunch of us discovered that we could borrow camping equipment from the uni for a nominal sum, so we planned an adventurous getaway to a delightful little town named Harrietville at the foot of the Victorian ski fields.

About a dozen of us set off with hope in our hearts and boxes of peach cooler in our boots. What could go wrong? We pooled our resources and booked two adjoining camping sites at the local caravan park, which at that time of year expanded into the adjacent recreation reserve, so yes, we were camping on the local footy oval.

Our set-up was three little tents and one larger tent arranged in a vague circle with a big tarpaulin strung up between them. Under the tarp we had one of those fold-out tables and a bunch of camping chairs of various sizes and structural integrities. This is where we ate, played cards and drank the aforementioned peach cooler. Good times, right?

What we didn’t account for was how awful the weather can be in that area at this time of year. It rained for about six hours on the first day. And as novice campers, we didn’t anticipate that the tarpaulin we had so expertly rigged up would essentially catch all the rainwater until it couldn’t hold it anymore and then, that it would collapse on top of us, dumping cold wet water (the worst kind) on our game of Uno. In case you’re wondering, it’s quite the mood killer.

The other journey of discovery for me and several of my fellow campers was that a big old canvas tent does very little to protect you from the serious chill of the ground beneath you. There were about seven of us piled into that thing and it was freezing every night. We were like refrigerated sardines, but more miserable. We hadn’t thought to bring any sort of sleeping mat, so the only things between us and the ground were our thin sleeping bags and the canvas floor. The canvas floor, it should be noted, appeared to conduct the cold rather than protect us from it.

The other downside of a canvas tent is that if you’re inside it and touch the sides while it’s raining on the outside, you magically make it wet on the inside. This, I discovered, is suboptimal, because that’s where you’re trying to sleep, and I don’t know if you’re aware, but you have a greater chance of falling asleep if you’re not cold and wet.

In addition to this physical discomfort, somewhere nearby, in another equally dismal camping set-up on the same footy oval, a man was snoring at approximately the decibel level of an industrial chainsaw. The only positive note to this ruckus was that we weren’t one of his family members actually having to share a tent with it. I honestly don’t know how they did it without murdering him during the wee hours of the morning. Noise-cancelling headphones weren’t invented yet, but they wouldn’t have stood a chance.

The second day was equally damp, but slightly less bearable due to the sleep deprivation and the fact that the cold was seeping into our bones. It was going to take more than peach cooler to get us through this weekend.

Look, it’s hard to argue that we were testing our survival instincts given we were at a caravan park and there were hot showers, even if you had to wear your sturdiest thongs to prevent a fungal infection, but it felt like it was some sort of exercise in perseverance. Not Bear Grylls levels of perseverance, but perseverance nonetheless.

It’s that weekend that taught me that I could never last on Survivor or I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here, and I didn’t even have to eat hippo testicles to come to this realisation. And I don’t care that tents have improved their technology and that there are lightweight mattresses and sleeping bags and earplugs that could greatly enhance the experience. The damage is done.

It’s safe to say that I am not cut-out for the outdoor life. I mean, I loved hiking the Cape to Cape, but at the end of each hearty day of of bushwalking, we retired to a very comfortable beachside resort, with a side of wine tasting. I am very much in favour of making day-long forays into the great outdoors, as long as there is comfort waiting for me at the end of it. An innerspring mattress and a flushing toilet at the very least. I know, I’m fancy like that.