The Camping Trip

I made it ten minutes before having to upload something.....Ich bin ungeduldig?

Ok so this is the middle week of the school holidays which would be fine except I'm the glass half empty kind of person which means we are slowly but surely heading back to hell......No school's not that bad but I find it necessary to over-dramatise.

Anyway so my mother decided that it would be a great idea to take our German exchange student Laura. (I call her the German though so prepare yourself) anyway she thought it would be fun if we all went camping. Then my Mum's friend Robyn decided to come too and bring her brood along which quickly meant that BFFL (Ebony) wanted her boyfriend to come and therefore my boyfriend Andrew (Boy) came too.

So this is how our trip began, full of hope and joy...

...Quickly drowned by the terrible weather in Lorne which forced us to sleep in the car whilst watching our tents be ripped out of the ground and begin to fly off. Luckily the German was with us and with her powers of engineering and Aussie laziness we watched from the warm dry car as she battled with the storm to keep the tents upright. She succeeded and for ten minutes we celebrated until we had to boot her out of the car again to fix the tents.

So we went to the beach in the freezing weather, Boy pushed me off a waterfall and BFFL and boyfriend were no where to be seen. An interesting start but I got a book that is no longer in print and BFFL bought herself a 1912 copy of Alice in Wonderland so everyone was happy despite the weather.

After two days we gave in and packed up to move into a cabin in Mt. Gambier. The cabins were fantastic, warm and dry which was something I was not after Boy threw me into the pool. It seemed that after three days he was determined that all my clothes were to be soaked because he put us on the water boats in Lorne where yet more clothes fell victim to the water!

It was in Mt. Gambier that I decided it was time for me to start driving. I drove the car back and forward for twenty minutes and managed to nearly run the German down twice, seems I am not to be trusted in a vehicle just yet! We saw lots of Koalas and other Australian life, mum started going on a rampage and Boy woke me up at 5am to see a sunrise that didn't turn up till 7:20 so I was left to sit in the dark for over two hours being forced to vocalise my annoyance at the freezing temperature and billions of milliipedes around that were mounting my feet...gross. I sought revenge after that and any other practice sessions in the car were aimed at running him down!

Ok so I've described my mum as rampaging. You see she has only one child. Two if you include the Germain so the idea of six teenagers being around (BBFL'S little sister included) made her very angry. VERY ANGRY. Unfortunately, being the slow children we are, we didn't learn to move fast enough and often were caught by her death stare leaving welts and an unnerving feeling....not really but still, I don't think BBFL's sister will ever quite recover!

Adelaide was the best. BFFL and Boyfriend stayed no where to be seen, Mum rampaged herself out in Mt. Gambier so was cool, calm and collected, Hahndorf, the Bruhns (her sister's exchange family) and good weather kept the German happy. In fact I think Adelaide may have been the only place void of a tantrum except from Boy's epic tanty at BBFL for not helping out with anything. We went to yet another water activity in which Boy attempted to talk me into water slides but having finally gained warm dry clothes I stayed away from his determined attempts to throw me into the water.

Yesterday we faced the 9 hour car trip home. The German slept, the BFFL whined and the Boy tickled me everytime I fell asleep because he couldn't sleep and didn't want to be left conscious alone. We karaoked our way home to Kelly Clarkson despite Boy's disgust and even whipped out a little of Mum's 80's musical knowledge.

Now I am home though and finally had a bed that didn't slide out from under me if I turned over!

I have learnt that camping is not my mother's style, learnt that you have approximately 1.2 seconds to run for it if you see her begin to go purple and that the German can sleep more than I though it human. She's more like a cat! She slept nearly 8 hours in one day and then went to bed at 10pm to wake up at 9am.

So I guess no camping for a while?

Hope all is well.