Maybe not both kinds of camping.....

• There's still overlanding
• There's still "dig your own toilet"
• There's still glamping

There are many, countless variations to the camping formula and each of them is valid - if you're getting outdoors, anything will do.

So this last school holidays, we managed to get out, we managed to go camping.

Twice

The formula was pretty straight forward:

• Leave for Nelson, Vic on day one of holidays
• Come home part way through, refresh & attend my nephew's birthday
• Hit the road again for Zumsteins, Vic (northern Grampians)

Nelson

Our first trip out to Nelson started off on the wrong foot - late. This was what the sky looked like when we arrived:

Let me backtrack to explain....

The week prior to leaving for Nelson, our plan was pretty simple:

1. We would lay out all our camp gear over the week
2. My wife would sort out clothes, shopping etc, during the day while the kids were at school
3. I would be moving large items and camp-tubs during the evenings and starting an incremental pack of the car

In short, our intention was to be able to hit the road first thing on Saturday morning, making it to Nelson in time for a late lunch.

Instead the following happened:

1. The week prior to holidays I flew up to Sydney for work
2. I picked up Covid on this trip (I'm assuming from the flight)
3. Two days after I started developing symptoms and tested positive my whole family started showing symptoms - they tested positive too - all of them
4. We spent the week indoors and sick. Not packing. Not preparing

Come Saturday morning we had done no prep. My wife suggested we bump our trip by a day. I stubbornly refused - I'd rather arrive at night and start Sunday there as opposed to hitting the road on Sunday. And arrive at night we did.

By the time we arrived at our campsite on the banks of the Glenelg river it was after 10PM. That meant headlamps on and set up the tent in the dark.

So, where were we? We were at Battersbys Camp site on the Glenelg river. This meant absolutely no mobile reception, a long-drop style loo, plenty of walking tracks, great fire pits, piers from which to go fishing. All up it was a pretty spectacular place to be. The only real detractor was that being a ParksVic site, it's public so we had our fair share of passers-by to contend with.

We had plenty of visits from the local wildlife, including a very bold mother possum who stole a banana from our kitchen table. What I loved the most was how close the birds were willing to get to us, it's amazing how fearless they can be when they haven't lived their life recognising people as a threat.

Fishing was all my son could think about so together with my father in law we spent a day on the pier. Given the often hectic pace of my day job there was something truly wonderful about sitting out by the water, completely out of mobile range just enjoying existing. And I'm not a keen fisherman.

If my son is super-keen to go fishing, my daughter wants to be doing absolutely anything else. Other than spending time documenting birds or playing pocket board games, she took to the walking the walking trails any time she could convince one of the adults to get moving.

The weather did play its part in sending us home a day early however.

While I finally had an opportunity to justify my double awnings with light rain and wind here and there, one of the passers-by through our camp site indicated that heavy rain was on the way. To avoid packing down wet tents in the rain, we made the choice to cut our trip short by a day. In retrospect I'm glad we did. The night we left we decided to pass through Geelong for fish&chips for dinner. With the benefit of a mobile signal we checked BOM and confirmed that it was bucketing rain at the camp site at that very moment. I was a bit sad to wrap up a day early, but it's what I consider a good call.

intermission

Between trips we had one critical situation to deal with - sleeping gear. I had already gone all out on sleeping gear, our beds were a combination of low profile stretchers together with self inflating foam mats - the combination nears "real bed" levels of comfort. We had 2 problems to attend to pillows and sleeping bags.

On the pillow front it was pretty straight forward: inflatable camp pillows are either too thin for side sleeping (both my wife and I are slide sleepers) or if inflated fully feels too much like sleeping on a balloon. This combined with the fact our home pillows consume too much space to keep everything within the car meant we needed a new solution. I won't labor the point, we landed on the Zempire self inflating Chill Pill pillow. I have no association with them, it's just the best damn camp pillow I've found to date. the combination of thick foam with the ability to use air to add/remove pressure is magic.

Sleeping bags was a bit more nuanced:

• I'm a bit too big to adequately fit into my slim hiking sleeping bag (need to get the exercise up!)
• My wife's habit of side sleeping and curling her knees up slightly meant she found her back constantly pressed against the zip of her sleeping bag, creating a cold channel against her back
• My daughter had shot up since I asked her to test her (kids sized) sleeping bag a month prior and it was now too short for her
• My son likes to sleep stretched out and his tapered - cut sleeping bag was just too restrictive for his tastes

PHEW - that's quite the list. Here's how we addressed it.

The easy one My daughter is now the proud owner of my wife's former sleeping bag.

The others

• My wife's new bag is the Coleman Mudgee Tall, it's super long and super wide - all things my wife doesn't need. It's also as comfortable a sleeping in a normal bed and doesn't result in cold spots when side sleeping - all things my wife loves.
• My bag is the Oztent Hamilton XL. WOW this thing is enormous. Up until I got this thing I just assumed that I had to tolerate my feet being pressed up hard against the end of my sleeping bag. It's super generous and again, I'm as comfortable as sleeping in a real bed. Love it.
• For my son we landed on the Oztent Hamilton Junior, yep the kids version of my sleeping bag. It's spacious enough that he now feels comfortable and less restricted without going all the way to an adult sized bag.

So that's all that sorted. Everyone's happy with their bags, this does come with the cost however that all 4 bags no longer fit in our sleeping tub. It's now 3 bags in, 1 bag out.

Zumsteins

Half a week later we found ourselves traveling to the Northern Grampians - to the Zumsteins. This was a different camp yet again, we booked a site on a property that's normally a scout camp but can be booked privately when not being used by the scouts. A kitchen, a dining hall to eat in, flushing toilets, even hot showers. If we'd had cabins rather than tents this would have been glamping.

We were out with another family also with young kids so the additional facilities made life easier. Most night the biggest issue we had to manage was what time we would roast marshmallows.

I've previously written at length about the Grampians, so I won't repeat things here. Suffice to say it's still one of my most loved places in Australia with tons to see and do provided you're willing to get out and about.

This time we changed up the pace a bit, we spent most of our time around camp just letting the kids roam and have fun in a brilliantly safe environment. There were still plenty of animals and creatures to stoke the kids' collective curiosity, from kangaroos to spiders to lizards.

And once the kids were asleep and it was just the adults hanging around the campfire, the night sky didn't disappoint. In fact as I write this I'm feeling a touch of sadness that we're not there now.

fin

This was a holiday that I'd LOVE to repeat. On one hand we finally got to put the camping gear that we've been slowly building up over years to good use. On the other, it was just a great time to get the kids away from devices and to switch off collectively as a family.