For me, Easter means one thing: wet camping. Whereas Christmas is a season promoting goodwill and charity to others, Easter is all about a grim determination to make the absolute most of a couple of public holidays and a commitment to the family camping equipment come hell or high water. And whereas ‘hell or high water’ is often just a turn of phrase, when it comes to Easter it is a simple statement of fact.
For me, Easter means one thing: wet camping. Whereas Christmas is a season promoting goodwill and charity to others, Easter is all about a grim determination to make the absolute most of a couple of public holidays and a commitment to the family camping equipment come hell or high water. And whereas ‘hell or high water’ is often just a turn of phrase, when it comes to Easter it is a simple statement of fact.
Tired of renting on-site vans that housed a multitude of arachnids, our family bought a campervan. The genius of a campervan is that it collapses down to a more manageable size for towing purposes. In its compact form, it resembles one of those mini-caravans used for transporting greyhounds. But upon arriving at your destination, it transforms into something that looks like the love child between a site office and a circus tent. But whether collapsed or expanded, it’s difficult to fit five children and a couple of parents into a campervan, so we also had an annex.
The annex hooked onto the side of the campervan like a leech. It was here that my brother Cam and I were sent. Uniquely, the annex failed to keep the cold out, whilst simultaneously trapping the heat. When the temperature plummeted, it was not uncommon to wake up with an icicle hanging from the end of your nose. When the mercury soared, the annex acted not only as a shelter but also as an alternative oven, able to bake a loaf of bread or slow roast a chicken.
Cam and I had bunks. Even though this was the pre-IKEA age – when the very suggestion that you should assemble a piece of furniture was greeted as if it was a declaration of madness – camping furniture was an exception. Whether it was because space was at a premium or, rather, that the very act of assembly was returning you to your primal outdoor roots is debatable. What was crystal clear is that the need to construct anything – no matter how basic – left me at a distinct disadvantage.
Luckily, I had a younger brother who was a black belt in Lego and could assemble the bunks with his eyes closed. In retrospect, I suspect he assembled our beds this way to make me feel more incompetent than I already did. If, indeed, that were possible. Worse still, he would show off by making the metal equivalent of balloon animals out of the steel framing before finally revealing a bunk. It got so that he would make quite a production out of it, even wearing a cape and declaring ‘abracadabra’ before unveiling the assembled bunks.
Back then, you needed very little to face the world and all its challenges. One of the key pieces of equipment to get through life was, without doubt, a good quality sleeping bag. These items always came with a promise that they could guarantee a comfortable night’s sleep down to a certain temperature. This, of course, ignored the fact that, when camping, there is no such thing as a comfortable night’s sleep. But despite this, it was always reassuring to know that your sleeping bag could withstand temperatures down to two below zero, even if you couldn’t.
We were determined to make the most of Easter, even when the weather was against us. Perhaps in defiance of the elements, we chose to camp at Glen Cromie in Gippsland. Apparently, the northern Indian village of Mawstnram holds the world record as the wettest place on earth. Clearly, those people have never been to Glen Cromie, where rain always seemed to be the default setting.
This made setting up a challenge. Expanding the campervan and assembling the annex were difficult at the best of times. Add persistent sleet and you have an experience about as pleasant as being water-boarded. Trapped in a confined space for days on end, we would pass the time with gentle pursuits such as snap, backgammon and whining. Of course, one of the things about being away for Easter was the fear that the Easter Bunny may not be able to locate us in order to deliver the awesome payload of chocolate we believed was our rightful due. Despite my pleas, my parents didn’t leave so much as a note back at our house. We never put Father Christmas through the wringer like this. It seemed to be tempting fate.
Despite my concerns, on Easter Sunday we would awake – icicles from our noses – and find that the Easter Bunny had come through. This extraordinary attention to detail would, nowadays, be most likely regarded as stalking. Indeed, when I think about it, the only way the Easter Bunny could know where we were is if he followed us. Like Max Cady in Cape Fear, I imagined the Bunny attaching himself to the underside of the family Tarago as we travelled from Tyabb to Glen Cromie, all the while waiting for his chance to strike…
Perhaps it was all that time in the annex that caused my imagination to run riot. As the wind and rain held us hostage, discussions would soon begin between my parents as to whether we should head home early. It was always something of a relief when we were given the order to dismantle the bunks. Without fail, as we pulled out of the camping ground, the first fingers of sunshine would begin to claw at the sodden earth. Proof, if it was needed, that our Easter was at an end.