Aussie Camping Adventure

In the five years I've been living in Australia I've come a long way in creating myself as an Australian. But there was one thing missing: an Aussie camping trip! For the past few years I have been longing to sleep in a tent and roast marshmallows over a camp fire. Unfortunately for me, I haven't had particularly camping inclined friends. So while I've gone on a few road trips now, they've always involved staying in buildings with electricity, plumbing, and beds.

Fortunately for me, I met my girlfriend, hence forth referred to as 'Foxy'. Foxy loves road trips and camping, so when I told her I was serious about wanting to go camping over brunch one morning, within 2 hours we had our trip planned and booked! Since I can't even remember the last time I went camping we decided to go to a caravan park instead of just rocking up to the bush like she's used to. At the recommendation of some of my friends, we settled on Cumberland river on the Great Ocean Road.

The thing about camping is, you need a car. While Foxy has a car, she doesn't have her licence. And while I have my licence, I've hardly driven in the past 5 years, had never driven in Melbourne, and had quite limited experience driving on the left. Look, we did alright! Both the people and the car made it there and back without injury, bar a few frazzled nerves. Let's just say, driving at night is much harder than I remember it. Driving down the Great Ocean Road at night is terrifying. I'm glad that most of the driving we did was during the bright, sunny, clear-skied day!

We hit the road late Friday morning and headed off for what was both my first Aussie camping adventure and me and Foxy's first weekend away together. The drive down the Great Ocean Road is truly beautiful, and it is actually a fun drive too - if you like windy roads. By the time we left on Sunday I was really enjoying making my way around those tight bends. I'm not going to lie, I really do enjoy driving and it was damn good to be behind the wheel of a car again! Even if I was pretty nervous.

Great shark! On the Great Ocean Road.

We got to the campground in the afternoon, and were very pleased to discover that not only did our campsite have a beautiful view, but it was also probably the shadiest site in the campground. Foxy got the tent up, with me attempting to be helpful. She'd picked us up a 6 person tent, so we had heaps of room (relatively speaking), and I've got a nifty air mattress, so we were pretty darn comfortable! Once we'd gotten ourselves set up, we cracked open a couple beers and enjoyed the serenity. At least until we discovered that we were camping next to a large group of dads with a disproportionate number of daughters, all under the age of 7. The dad two sites over from us was particularly crap, as were his bratty daughters who kept wandering into our campsite to play and then looked at us like wtf were we doing there... *shutter*

Tent up = beer o'clock!

After we had gotten ourselves settled we popped over across the road for some quality beach time. The beach was good! The sand was soft and not too hot, the waves were crashing in impressively, there were neat rocks to explore on, and we were right where the river met the ocean. That evening we drove into nearby Lorne for dinner, followed by ice cream. Then it was back to the campground for our first night in the tent.

Beach time!

We lucked out and got really amazing weather. The nights were cool but not too cold, the mornings were slightly overcast with a cool breeze, but then the sun would break through the clouds and the rest of the day would be sunny and just hot enough to be enjoyable summer weather. We weren't the only ones who fluked out on the good weather though! It turns out Saturday afternoon we had front row seats to a wedding! As many of you know, I'm not exactly a fan of weddings. But I enjoyed this one. Everyone was really friendly and relaxed. We had a chat with the groom and the uncle as they set up the decorations for the ceremony in the morning and they were really lovely and encouraged us to come watch the wedding (the uncle referred to children as short monsters, instantly winning us over).

How's the serenity?

The campground is on a bushwalking trail to some waterfalls. I think there's a few different falls you can go to, depending on how far you want to hike. We decided to check out Cumberland Falls, which was approximately a 9km return trip. Planning to have a swim in the rock pools and a picnic lunch, we packed up my backpack with supplies and headed off. This bushwalk involved a fair bit of river hopping, which I was quite happy about as I enjoy scampering over rocks. Foxy was less keen on that part of it, but by the time we came back she was making her way across the rocks like a champ!

We had been left with the impression that the trail was fairly easy and well marked. For the most part that was true, but there were certainly a few places where we had no idea where the trail was, and the bit right before the falls involved more intense rock clambering that we'd signed on for. In the end, we didn't have a picnic or go for a swim, so the pack was a bit of a nuisance. But now we know for next time.

Cumberland Falls

I'd been going on about how I wanted to see some Australian wildlife, and may or may not have said "This trip won't be complete unless I see a marsupial." (Which we did - we saw some kangaroos while driving into Lorne.) On the hike we came across heaps of lizards. I am a fan of reptiles, so I was pretty happy about that. Although, this being Australia, I was a bit disappointed that the lizards weren't gigantic. So after one of our river crossings on the way back, when I saw a large reptilian head on the other side of some rocks, I was pretty keen to get up close and personal with a big ass lizard!

IT WAS NOT A LIZARD!!! I stepped over the rock and found myself standing right beside an impressively sized snake. Now, I like snakes, a lot. But as Foxy put it, "The 5th most poisonous snake in Australia will still kill you."

I quickly backed up to the other side of the rocks while calling out "SNAKE! It's a snake!" With Foxy behind me going "Get back! Get back!" For its part, the snake slithered off back into the bush where it was safe from pestering humans trodding on it. All it wanted was to sun itself on the nice, warm rocks.

There were some people coming up the track, so I thought I'd be useful and yelled out that there was a snake up ahead. Apparently this was not a helpful thing to do. When they reached us - a group of barefooted, bare chested men and teenage boys - we informed them that there had been a snake and it had gone back into the bush.

One of the boys asked what it looked like and Foxy said "It was black with a yellow belly."

"Ah, a yellow-bellied black snake." The boy replied.

Classic Australiana.

Relaying this story to Hubby, he informed me that there is no such thing as a yellow-bellied black snake. With a bit of Googling I discovered that what we stumbled across was actually a tiger snake which is one of the most venomous snakes in the world. Well then!

Our walk went quite quickly after that and we found ourselves back at our campsite in no time. We got stuck into our lunch and watched as the wedding got into full swing. We'd been informed that the bridal car was something to watch out for, and sure enough, they rocked up in a baby blue combie. We both quite enjoyed watching the wedding from our campsite, not only because of the wedding, but because all these other people came and stood beside our campsite to watch from what could be considered a respectful distance. And while they stood around and had a geeze, we got to hear all the goss about the couple and about the campground. For two people who love people watching, this was the perfect way to spend the afternoon!

The Bridal Combie

Once the wedding had cleared off we headed back over to the beach to get in a bit of an ocean swim. The waves were crashing and the rip was pulling and it was just so damn refreshing! We had a bit of a play in the rocks again and then headed back to the campground for a shower before driving back into Lorne for dinner.

And then, after dinner, we came back to our campsite for a special treat. S'MORES!!!!! Honestly, this was the real reason I wanted to go camping. I hadn't had s'mores in years, and it had been even longer since I'd had them the traditional way: marshmallows roasted in a camp fire. I'd brought graham crackers and jet puffed marshmallows back from Canada on my last trip out there and had been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to get myself around a camp fire to bust them out.

We were at a bit of a disadvantage with roasting the marshmallows as we didn't have a proper stick to put them on and were using bamboo skewers instead. This meant that we had to be pretty close to the fire, which meant we got faces full of smoke. So there were none of the golden brown artisan marshmallows of my youth, but we made due. I was very happy to get to share the wonderous glory of s'mores with Foxy. You can't get graham crackers in Australia, so they're not really a thing here. It would be a source of much sadness for them, if only they knew what they were missing out on.

S'MORES!!!!!

Once we had stuffed ourselves with s'mores it was off to bed, where sleep was interrupted by obnoxious teenage boys and a coughing/crying baby. Sunday morning we were greeted with the familiar sounds of shrieking children, signalling that it was time for us to get up and pack up the campsite and make our way back to Melbourne. We made a good team getting everything sorted and it wasn't long before we were ready to hit the road again. We stopped in Lorne one last time for brunch (at the most Melbourne-esque cafe we could find) and then joined the scores of weekend holidayers making their way back to the city. I was a much more confident driver by this point, and the drive home was pretty uneventful, the highlight being us taking a more direct route than suggested by the GPS and listening to her mispronounced 'recalculating'.

All in all, my first Aussie camping adventure was a big success! I got to drive, I saw some marsupials, I slept in a tent, I didn't get eaten alive by bugs (though I did coat myself in a fair bit of DEET), I had a close encounter with a snake, I got to make motherfucking S'MORES!, I built a camp fire, I swam in the ocean, I went on a bushwalk, and most importantly, I got to spend an amazing weekend away with Foxy. I can't wait to do it all again!