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Tag: Camping

When we were at the caravan park, all this happened

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It was the same as every caravan park we go to; that micro-village, micro-home-place where it’s possible to get to the end of what you need to do and then just sit and look at things. Like your feet in thongs, which are suddenly kind of interesting.

You can look at anything; even the toilet block and the bin area become interesting because they’re so busy and necessary.

You can watch all those kids running past or riding past, first singly and then in clots, and then in  teams because all the kids start to clump together and form underworld games that go all evening and then disperse as soon as the first kid gets called back for tea.

Then, after tea, the kids clang together again and the game goes on even though no one actually said anything. They just come out into the road, still chewing, and look to see if any other kids are done yet. As soon as someone rides past they just join in.

It’s good that things haven’t really changed.

When we got there it was evening:

  • People still driving in were going slowly to get their bearings, find the toilet block and look with frowning faces at all the sites in case someone is on their site by mistake. There it is. That’s ours. It’ll do.
  • Some arrivals were already setting up with tense faces in case something’s wrong with the tent or they discover something’s been left at home. Like all the beer.
  • Settlers were at the point where they could sit back in camping chairs and look at their feet in thongs and check the ice in the esky and listen to the idea of chops for tea.
  • Young people stand around their sites next to little tents and huge eskies and open cans and nod to each other, agreeing with everything because life is good.
  • Young parents look exhausted no matter what time of day it is. Their heads swing from side to side scanning every angle of the park, the road, their tent, the world. The mind of the young parent remains on high alert. They examine the air and the temperature and look for bees. They think about nutrition and air mattresses. They think they might have a drink but never actually get to it.

We are grandparents and so can set our stuff up free of all that now. Nothing goes wrong. We brought everything we needed. The grandchildren’s faces light up in amazement to see us there even though they knew we were coming. We set out all our stuff carefully and look at the sky and the sea. We examine the camp kitchen and note the recycling faculties. We compare everything to What We’ve Seen Before.

At our camp:

  • We eat whatever there is. First night doesn’t matter.
  • There is a book and a drink stuck in the side of every camp chair.
  • The sun goes down and the mossies come out.
  • The grandchildren won’t go to sleep.
  • The park kids buzz past with purposeful faces.
  • The sky is orange on the horizon and black ink up high. The stars came out. The tidal beach breathes seaweed and sand.
  • Families argue and caravan doors slam everywhere.
  • Esky lids bang up and down all evening.

When I wake up it is morning but still dark:

  • The air is one long fresh drink of water
  • Some people are already up and sitting in camping chairs looking at their relaxed crossed feet in thongs.
  • The toilets are warm and comforting.
  • A few kids are out riding bikes
  • There are already kids on the jumping pillow.
  • Magpies everywhere
  • An old couple across the little road are packing up
  • A man down the row is asleep on the ground half in and half out of a little tent.

People come out of tents and caravans slowly and stand there yawning and scratching at bites and with no need to hurry.

There are bottles and cans on the floor of the outside kitchen and a small crate of dishes and a bottle of detergent left there. There are two jumpers and a towel slung over the swimming pool gate. A little terrier is waiting outside the ladies toilets.

Three kids walk past the toilets side by side still in pyjamas and one says, ‘Wait, I’ll ask my mum.’  When I walk through the caravans to our camp, a man calls out, ‘Who left the lid off the esky?’ And someone inside the caravan says, ‘It’s busted’. And the man sits back down in his camping chair and looks down at his thongs. It’s good to be able to do these important things in good places where we are safe. From war.

The unique texture of caravan parks

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Caravan parks have a sizzling texture. They are warm and busy maps, put together with crayons, crayfish, late bookings, barbeques, and ice melting on the ground outside the kiosk. They are mostly pretty much the same, especially in summer.

‘Hellooo, it’s just teatime, love.’ This was called out next door to me. Next door means just three meters down, past the tap, the hose, the flapping towels, and bathers and two upturned eskies draining last night’s philosophy.

Everywhere there are kind bowls of clean water for dogs. Family pets that sleep exhausted under the edge of every second annexe. Hoses, camping chairs, fishing rods, bathers hanging in trees.

There’s a pink surfboard leaning against the shack across the track, and three children sitting at a table in bathers playing cards and eating chips. It is so quiet that we can hear the seagulls on the beach, and the  people on the jetty.

‘Beautiful.’ This is yelled out across a warm evening, along with the snap of beer caps.

‘You’re going the wrong way.’ Called out hilariously to someone backing a boat slowly down the wrong track. ‘Yeah, yeah, sorry mate.’

‘I’m going the jetty,’ Children calling back to parents.

‘Hello, how are ya?’ Called out by everybody meeting anybody.

‘Mal. Where are the frozen chips?’ This conversation shattered the stillness of the hot afternoon when most campers were slewed about in camping chairs, eyes shut, mouths open (‘Not asleep, Di, just resting’).

‘Mal – did you get the frozen chips?’

 ‘The what?’ The man was half in the car, searching frantically through the shopping.

‘The chips, the frozen chips.’

‘I dunno.’ She turned and went back inside. She banged the shack door.

‘Who left the fridge open?’ We heard this from three rows down. A gaggle of children running past in thongs and clutching streaming ice blocks looked back and kept going without answering.

‘And I said…and I said, well it’s your marriage. It’s your marriage. What’d you expect? It’s your marriage. I mean, he was like fordy. What’d he expect? I know. Yeah. I know.’ This from neighbours on a warm and still evening, sun streaking across barbeques, and the wine flowing.

At our backs, the beach, empty and clean.

It gets dark. It’s still warm. In front of us, children zig zig and dart about on bikes and scooters in and out of light and shadow like soft moths in flight.

Pontoon

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All our kids jumped off that pontoon.
And it’s still there, moored in the middle of the bay, animated during the day, motionless across the evening when all the kids have logged off and gone back to the caravan park.

The pontoon was heavy, the water was green and cold and deep, and the games had no form, the platform had no rules; it was just get out of the deep, get on to the float and then get off spectacularly. It was about hurling muscle and energy and seawater into smoky, bubbling patterns. To get up, there was a metal ladder, to get off there was just the edge- then the plunge into the marine and someone else’s foot giving you a blood nose and everyone saying it wasn’t even them.
All the parents sat on the shore and wondered if they should get in, wondered if they would make it out to the pontoon, wondered if there was still ice in the esky, wondered if it was too early for a beer, wondered where the sunscreen was. They were just realizing that the days were starting to go fast, never realizing that these kids would have their kids and bring those kids to the same bay, that same pontoon, that life buoy still nodding generously for the next version of campers, parents and kids and eskies.

Photography by Paul Cullen ( thanks Paul, for this great photo of all our kids! )

 
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Noah and Max play in the sand

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And they cannot dig fast enough to satisfy the urge to dig. And they cannot move around enough to satisfy the need to move around. For the entire time that we are there they do not halt – it is warm and bright, and the sea is glass green and close by and noisy and the sand is endless in all directions.
The sand is also warm and pouringly beautiful and then it is chilled and firm and buildingly lovely. The babies cannot be still. They turn and twist and bend about, they drink the sea and eat the sand and frown around the seaweed that laces their lives and they mislay their balance and their knees move faster than their hands and they are nosing in surf, kissing sand, shoulder down and roaring rage. But there is no time to scan for family rescue, it is too slow, instead there is a shell, an exceptional pile of new sand, a pool of water with further possibility.
In fact, each time they turn around the landscape has refreshed itself, what was once travelled must be repeated, the new results are just as spectacular.
But then, suddenly, they are hungry. Everything dulls, the sand is now slightly irrelevant, they are deaf to the sea, gaze at faces, focus only on hunger and they move toward another recovery, each layering down already, a baby bedrock of experience and memory.

Noah leans back.

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It is nearly the last day of our holiday and we are having lunch, by the sea, in summer, in the heat, under cool glass and next to the blue. Morgan and I have chosen mussels, I remember these from a year ago and they made me happy so I have ordered them again, mussels in shells, a thousand of them, too many, whirling in tomato and garlic and other things with chilli, red wine maybe. I am wondering if the chilli will be real and it is because when we lift the lid, the steam comes out angrily and the chillies lie there, amongst the mussels, obscene and arrogant and not knowing their proper place, perfect.
We are elbow deep in mussels and shells and ciabatta bread and there is too much food and too much sky through the windows and the babies are hooting and eating things and Noah is at the end of the table, between his parents, supreme amongst food and family and spoons and forks and garlic bread.
He and his baby cousin Max are hurling things to the floor and gazing open mouthed at the response from family, they are filing away the satisfying response from family.
I cannot eat any more food, but there is still too much food waiting to be eaten. I can only stare at everyone else. Family, ordinary and ordinary but still defying understanding.
Morgan, is gone, lost in the mussel pot, the good cold beer and hunger, and his son, Noah, is leaning back superbly into the armchair of summer, and his parents gaze over at the floor and the scattered food and the toys and they look down at all of this with joy.

The children who found something with a metal detector in a caravan park

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There are two young children here in the caravan park, in the warm summer, on the hot grass and they have a metal detector.

They are purposeful, their backs are bent and their thin arms concentrate on the work. Every patch of patchy ground has potential…. gravel, sand, garden, asphalt, earth, kerb, grass, cement…all are tried and tried.
The detector beeps a small hoot every now and again and they stop and bob about to retrieve the treasure – a bottle top, a slip of metal, a casket of jewels. They scrape sand back reverently but there is usually nothing there. Then they push the sand back into place, gentle caretakers of this unnoticed ground.
But suddenly they have found something, and the detector makes a vast sound.
He says: it’s nothing.
She says: it’s something, look.
And they lean in, knees hopeful and noses together.
He says: it’s metal?
She says: it’s glass. It’s this. It’s this.
She picks it up, a small thing, holds it cupped and close, running eyes over the pleasing magic.
She says: it’s golden glass.
He says: it’s gold glass.
They take it to the tap and rinse the sand away from its golden value and the detector lies in the grass forgotten. The entire day, so deeply entered, is also forgotten.
The tap flashes in the sun, the stream of water flashes in the sun, their blond childhood heads blaze through the water drops, the warm, ticking scrub leaning kindly over them and the sea itself acknowledging the wisdom.

Photography by Yeshi Kangrang