Tent Tales

So, the first weekend in November saw our first experience of camping Aussie style. We went with Graham and Leanne and a few others up to Maldon, a stunning little historic town about two hours north of Geelong. It was the weekend of the Maldon Festival, a long-running folk festival which had performers all over town for four days.

Apparently it never rains in Maldon. Which would explain why it was raining when we got there on the Friday. The Scottish Factor strikes again... Our first experience of putting up the tent for real - and it all went remarkably smoothly, with much help from Ruth and Dave. The tent has three rooms - a bedroom at each end and a communal area in the middle. We set it up with our camp beds at one end, Phoebe's cot in the middle and the two sets of camp bunks at the other end. Phoebe will graduate to the bottom bunk under Ella when she is big enough. There is also a big awning on one side which gives us even more space for sitting and cooking. You can see Ella's new pink pram in this picture - it was a birthday present to replace her £4 Asda pram which only has half its original wheels left, but has done remarkably well considering it's been around the world.

In attendance for the weekend were the six of us with the tent, Graham, Leanne and their three boys in a caravan, Ruth and Dave in a caravan, Jenny, Andrew and their two children in a trailer tent, Neil and his son Scott with a caravan and Mick with his guitar, a bucketload of cheek and a one man tent. I suspect the last two facts are not unrelated... This picture shows Neil, Nick and Mick waiting for the sun to cross the footy oval and warm up our sites.

On Friday night we went into town to the Maldon Hotel for a little while and saw a couple of bands while the children were entertained by Michael the Balloonologist - you can see the results here. After the kids were in bed, we did our best to have a wild night, but it was truly freezing for those of us trying to sit outside drinking beer... so off to bed!! The new sleeping bags did their job in spite of being very cheap on sale and we spent a very comfortable first night in the tent.

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear and Ella opened her presents, all of which we had taken with us, apart from her new kitchen which she got when we came home. Leanne brought us birthday cupcakes first thing too, and everyone sang Happy Birthday. This was all too much for Ella who started crying. I had to promise her later there would be no more singing!!

After brekkie we headed off to the craft fair at the primary school. It was scorchingly hot so Nick and I bought hats - mine's a bit 'country' and as previously mentioned, Nick's is very 'jolly swagman' - but there really was a swagman there - he's called Campbell and he travels from festival to festival reciting traditional stories and verse.

The children had their faces painted - James and Matthew with flames, Ella with a butterfly and Will with a truly horrific skeleton face... which fortunately didn't make it into a photo! At least, not intact.... We drank Aussie cava for my birthday and local beer whilst waiting - Mmmmm!!

Went for a wander into town afterwards and found the bandstand full of morris men. Weird that I have never seen them in the UK, but come to the other side of the world and here they are... Also came across this band busking - note that the woman at the back has a custom-made washboard with BOOBIES!!

Headed back to camp to ice some cupcakes I had made for Ella's birthday and blow out some candles. She loved Leanne's candle that played Happy Birthday - amazing what you keep in a caravan! Bit of a race against time to ice the cupcakes before the sun melted the icing, but I guess they were ok as all the cupcakes bar one were gone in the next ten minutes...




Stayed around camp for the rest of the day - our sites were right next to the kids' playpark so we didn't see much of the children - they were off with Matthew, Thomas and other random children for hours at a time, only reappearing for food and drink. Barbecue for dinner then more beer after scrubbing children free of face paint...



Sunday we headed off to Mount Tarrangower Reserve for a picnic lunch. This is the main festival venue outside of Maldon itself and we sat for a while on the rocks listening to various bands while the children learned circus skills and did painting. This is Ella wearing Jackson's hat and Nick eating blueberries, in case that's not obvious... What you can't see in these pictures is James having a strop because he wasn't happy with his painting, or how head-to-toe filthy the children were from all the dust, or how swelteringly humid it was, until...

...it started to rain, so we headed for - where else? - the Guinness Tent. Leanne took the boys back to the campsite and Ella very accommodatingly fell asleep in the pram, so only Phoebe was awake for the jollity. I got all nostalgic with a pint of Guinness in my hand - it's been a long time... This is Dave at an angle. It's not the photo - he was actually standing like that...

It was still raining on and off through Sunday evening and about 11pm we had the biggest thunderstorm I have heard in years - the ground shook, the rain hammered on the tent, the lighning flashed all around... and every single one of our children slept through the whole thing. Eh? How come they wake up if you whisper and tiptoe near them, but can sleep through Armageddon? Anyway, the tent survived perfectly apart from being a tad damp so we had to put it up again on the deck when we got home to dry it out. All good practice!

All in all had a really awesome, relaxing, enjoyable, funny, entertaining weekend and we can't thank Graham and Leanne enough for including us - if we hang around we'll definitely be serial attendees. Needless to say, the kids adored camping and we have already planned the next camping trip in March - just 20 minutes down the road to Barwon Heads this time for the Labour Day weekend. But we may go somewhere sooner than that if the mood takes us... Watch this space!