The Big Camp In – Victoria
Bursting at its seams like Kyle Sandilands’ Levis, our car is packed to the hilt, kids faces mashed against the glass as we venture to the great outdoors for The Big Camp In: Home or Away. A Fathering Project initiative that aims to inspire and equip fathers and father-figures to positively engage with the children in their lives – for the benefit of kids. A great opportunity to spend some quality mano-akido time with the kids and get some much needed fresh air…just breathe Daddy, breathe.
The best thing is, after registering our family for #TheBigCampIn, The Fathering Project was Yoda to my Skywalker and gave me all the supportive guidance I needed. Trumpets heralded and the clouds parted as the Official Activity Program was bestowed upon me.
How It Works
The Big Camp In: Home or Away is kind of like a ‘choose your own adventure’ event, so you make it what you want. You and your kids decide the where, like a lounge room fort or under the stars in the wilderness. Note: No matter how many times your kids pester you, Minecraft is not a real world and no, you can’t camp there.
Camp anytime between Oct 18-20 and choose from 20 camping-themed activities from the Official Activity Program (thank you, Master Yoda). There’s great prizes up for grabs too for completing the activities. You need only complete 3 to be in the running, one of which is compulsory – #DadDate. It’s where your kids choose 5 things they’d like to do with you, one-to-one, then you choose 2 things from that list and put it in your diary to be completed before Christmas. Imagine my luck when my kids said playing golf and going to the race track!
Wait, I did say ‘imagine’.
My actual Dad Dates with Indy are Gravity Zone and the beach, and my Dad Dates with Alice are indoor climbing and baking cookies. We’ll cover them in future posts, no doubt.
Where Did We Go?
The Grampians of course, for a bit of Yowie hunting (nudge, nudge). For those unaware, I produced a suspense thriller podcast mini-series, Yowie Podcast, about a family’s Yowie attack in the Grampians National Park. Now Mumma’s letting me camp there alone with the kids…what could go wrong?
Fortunately, nothing…drastic. I may have underestimated the physical limitations of camping with a 4 year old. Lots of tripping, spilling drinks, getting too close to the fire and being afraid of the dark, and that was just me. We did stop for 30 mins on the way there to dry her car seat cover and her butt, under the hand dryer in McDonald’s. Relax folks, it’s only a water spill, not a ‘Number One’ accident. She told me the next day she was a bit embarrassed being held under the hand dryer to dry her pants, but hey, at least she was still fully dressed.
It was raining when we arrived at the Boreang Camping Grounds. I pitched the tent while the kids sheltered in the car. When the tent was finally up, a surf life-saver and a synchronized swimming team wanted to move in. I sopped all the water out of the inside of the tent but the rain was off-and-on like a Kardashian romance for a good couple of hours, or four.
But mostly, we had a pretty awesome time. We made flags for our camp: ‘T-Rex Topya’ (Topia) and ‘Flowers’. Banged out some warbly guitar solos on our bush-stick rubber band guitar. Shadow fights on the outside of the tent. The kids were real work-horses gathering firewood. We kept a lot of kindling under the awning of our tent to keep it dry. Guess who was the only camp to have a fire going first thing in the morning? Thinking ahead.
Check out more of our Big Camp In pictures and videos on our Instagram and Facebook pages.
In the evening we toasted marshmallows and told silly stories. We hit the sack at 9.30pm and Alice was out like a light, instantly. The kids slept like logs but I, the vigilant Dad, was awake for most of the night. The inflatable pillow on my airbed kept deflating, so I had to blow it back up endlessly throughout the night. Ever chased a straw around the rim of a glass with your tongue a few times before finally catching it? That’s me trying to find the valve on my deflated pillow in pitch darkness every hour from 11pm – 6am.
Around 3am, something was sniffing outside our tent. Right near my head on the other side of the tent wall. I’m not saying it was a Yowie, most probably a kangaroo or wombat, but I had eyelid wedgies at that stage. No matter how hard I tried to yank them open, they seemed to be very secured at the ‘crotch’.
Ain’t camping fun?
The Next Day
We rose at 7.20am which is a huge sleep in for my usual 6am kid-nicks. After breakfast, we threw a real boomerang around the campsite that we bought the day before and it worked like a treat. Then we packed up our gear and made our way to McKensie Falls. The kids were really excited. It’s the first waterfall they’ve ever seen. It was pretty awesome although the warning signs posted of the number of accidents and fatalities they’ve had there, again, made me super glad Mumma wasn’t with us to herd us from danger.
Going down was the easy part. 256 steps which we did in about 6 mins. The views of the waterfall were amazing and I mentioned to Indy how peaceful it seemed. Peaceful? How can it be peaceful when it’s so loud, he hollered back at me. Ah, the serenity.
The way back up was the same 256 steps, but did not take us 6 minutes. It took about 25 minutes, with several rest stops interspersed with me tag-team ferrying the kids on my back with me breathlessly thinking, I’m done. Scratch my name on the sign post as another fatality. Just leave my body here as a warning to others. It was brutal, but beautiful.
All in all, we had a super fun time during The Big Camp In and got to spend quality time with each other away from the distractions of technology and common sense. And a way better result than our first ever visit to the bush that ended with ants in our pants. Best of all, I enjoyed seeing my kids venturing out, exploring and testing themselves in ways they haven’t been tested before. A little bit like my patience and self-control.
Keep an eye out for The Big Camp In in your state and if you’ve missed it, you don’t have to wait until next year. Get active with your kids and be present with them. It will be worth all the heart arrhythmias and shallow breathing, I promise.
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