Yes, I did poop in a hole in the dirt.
Yes, it did rain.
Yes, I was sleeping.
Yes, I did get wet.
Yes, I did get eaten alive by mozzies (mosquitoes)
Yes, the top of my head did get sunburned. Badly.
Yes, they did tell me to wear a hat.
Yes, I went three days without changing my jocks or showering.
Yes, I absolutely loved it.
Yes, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
So now, let me tell you as much as I can about base camp. We arrived at the base of Mt. Beckworth on Friday afternoon and began setting up in our groups. There were three groups, all lead by fourth year students, with two leaders over everyone. My group had a total of nine people: Myself, Joel, Jack, Matt, Will, Emily, Kelly, Jessenia, and our fourth year leader, Louise, aka "Terps." Our group quickly named itself Purple Haze and got purple bandannas to wear throughout the camp. We laid down some ground rules, then set up camp. Now, when I thought "base camp" I thought tents. Wrong. We had two huge tarps, set up lean-to style. After setting up our tarps, we played lots of get-to-know-you sorts of games and really got close to each other. Then, I made a dinner of deviled sausages (which were a huge hit and several people said they didn't eat that good at home) and we played some night games including the "chocolate game." I also go to spend some time talking with Heather, the department head for Outdoor Ed. She's a really nice, really cool lady from, get this, Ontario Canada. And there's more, she grew up ON GEORGIAN BAY! My favorite game we played was a story telling game (of course). We sent two people off while the rest of us "came up with a story," when really, what we did was establish the rules. When they came back, we told them they had to guess the details of the story to figure it out, only what they didn't know was that if their questions ended in a vowel, we answered "yes" if they ended in a consonant, we answered "no" and if they ended in a Y we answered "maybe." Essentially, by guessing random details, they themselves wound an extravagant story about catching a forest on fire, the firemen floating into space, and knocking down a satellite which landed on my house, where I put out the fire. We then went to bed, where I slept outside the tarp to see the stars. However, it was cloudy, which meant I really couldn't see too many stars. Also, the clouds meant I got rained on during the night and quickly relocated to the tarp. I slept very poorly.
Day two, we woke up and had breakfast of oatmeal and went and played games for several hours with one of the other groups who had dubbed themselves "The Emus." We had a great time and had a lot of problem solving games which helped us work with each other as well as the Emus. Following that, we ate lunch of a taco-salad type wrap. We then packed up or tarps, loaded up our packs, and headed off into the bush. We got a crash course in navigation and set off to find various points on our maps. The, we were all taken individually to various points around the mountain and told just to reflect on nature/camp/ourselves/etc. for the next 30 min. I had a great time for that 30-40 minutes. This is what I wrote
What a rare moment this is. I'm on bushwalk on Mt. Beckworth and they've given us 30 min on our own to go and reflect. I'm at a peak, sitting on a boulder overlooking everything. Everything. I passed a kangaroo coming up here, except Terps said it was a wallaby. It's all the same to me. Another one just hopped by not 10 meters away. I'm dirty, sweaty, itchy, and smell bad, but I love this moment. I keep thinking about the crazy journey my life has taken to get me here. Seriously, it's unreal. A year ago, if you had told me I would by on top of a mountain in Australia, by myself, at this time, I wouldn't have believed you. This whole experience is still so surreal, I can't believe I'm here. It feels right, though. I was so unsure before, but now, I know it's right. I just can't get over how crazy this is. No one I will ever know will ever have this experience. That mekes all of this special to me. This moment--these short 30 minutes--are totally unique to me and my life and I'm so happy for that. My life is changed because of right now. This is living. This is happiness. This is my life. This is right.
We reunited after our "reflection" and Terps gave us the location for our camp that night and told us we could go off on our own to find it if we wanted. Of course I did. I left five minutes after the first group left and arrived at camp at least 15 minutes before anyone else. We set up camp, made dinner of pizza pasta, played more games, and went to bed with NO MOZZIES. I slept so well.
By the morning of day three, I had embraced my filth and no longer cared about trying to stay clean. However we all woke up to a rather unnerving sound which, for me, may have been scarier than for the others. I woke up to the sound of very angry sounding dogs barking. Mind you, we are way out in the bush. My first thought: are there wolves in Australia? My second thought: Dingoes. Turns out, there were trucks parked a few hundred meters away and the owners had left their dogs tied up in the back while they went off. We had pancakes for breakfast and did some orienteering. For those of you who may not know, orienteering is when you get a few points on a map and then must find your heading to them and search for a pre-placed marker in that area. We were told to work with people we hadn't yet worked with. I worked with Emily and Matt and announced that we were team "getting done first." We did. We then hiked to the summit of Mt. Beckworth and hung out, played games, ate lunch, and met up with The Emus. The last thing to do was debrief and get back to the buses. I challenged the Emus and told them we would beat them back. We did.
We got back, quickly unloaded, and got to our units for a MUCH needed shower.
I'm so glad I went and had so much fun. My group and my leader were amazing and I couldn't have picked a better group. Our personalities clicked very well and very quickly and everyone was supportive of everyone else. Terps was awesome and treated us like adults, not children, and really helped us learn for ourselves. I'm actually pretty bummed that I won't be with these same people for the next three years of camps.
I'm exhausted and need to pack and get myself ready for my trip to Cairns tomorrow. I'll update when I can but for now, here's some photos from camp.
Dinner
Chocolate game.
From left (Heather, Jessenia, Terps)
Tarp
Ready to go on bushwalk
Below is the view from camp the second night
Camp night two
Looking south from camp 2
Apparently I look scared in tents
Pizza Pasta
Getting ahead in the morning
100 year old tree at the summit
Summit view. Wind farms waaaaaaaaaaay out there.
At the summit. To the left, Purple Haze, to the right, Emus.
Sorry, I know this was a long post but I had so much fun on camp and it gave me a huge amount of confidence in many ways which I'll need, going off on my own tomorrow.
Cheers mates
XOXOXOX
~Daniel
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