ON THE ROAD AGAIN!: June 2008

Combine the spirit of adventure with a dose of ignorance and what do you get? Three adults, 2 teens and a 15 month old baby humming three hours down the road towards a 4 x 4 beach camping weekend at Fraser Island. Once you're on board the Inskip barge it's only 15 minutes to Hook Point. They almost stop to let you off!

There's a very teensy window of opportunity for accessing this spot on the beach for the return trip. We should have paid a little more attention to that. It wouldn't occur to us till much later, in fact, too late. But, no worries, we were on our way up the Eastern Beach. It was 75 miles of straight sand and shore line. All we had to do was find our camp site, unload, set up tents and a kitchen and "Wa la!", play time!

After two hours of getting stuck, "Are we there yet?", singing songs to our cranky baby, picking a spot on the map only to find it's "not quite right", nearly getting lost on and inland road, wondering if we had lost Baby and Mom when they wandered off for a gander of the Champagne Pools while Bart and I used the lovely outhouses, eating ham sandwiches and all the apples and oranges Liz prepared and packed we did choose and plant ourselves in a wonderful spot near the turn off for Ocean Lake.

That's when the real work began. Bart had to go back for water so that left me and the boys who, as lovely as they are, aren't the most industrious duo in town, to set up camp. Riley was practically running the engineering of the tent for about 4 whole minutes then quickly lost interest. Jeremy, well, he has perfected the craft of avoiding work so I don't even remember what he was supposed to do or why he didn't do it. Past experience would tell me he was testing out the closest dune on his boogie board. If you're a camper you already know we were in trouble with one person trying to put it all together and an evening meal lurking right around the corner.

I always forget that it's dark in the blink of an eye when you're out camping. The minute you notice the sun going down, it's over. So of course, it's dinner prep under the light of our decidedly wimpy lantern. It takes a certain mindset to feed people when you have no table or cupboards or drawers or refrigerator or sink of any kind, one that, sadly, I was not in. Let's just say it was a bit of a grump that pulled that meal off. Not my proudest moment, but I must say that I got a lot more help the next day!

After all that whinging (aussie for whining) you might think that I didn't notice the gorgeous full moon that made the weak light of the lantern much more tolerable, the silver glow of the curling wave tops on the ocean, the cool sea breeze, the bird's talk out in the woods, the baby's laugh as the boys tickled and teased him, the suspense of possible dingo's in camp or my sister's quiet voice calming her little one in the night. It's a special place and no amount of inconvenience, travel stress, ill preparation or bad mood could ruin a camping trip with my family on the world's largest sand island.

You may be wondering about that oversight that I foreshadowed earlier. Yup, we missed the ferry. The trip to the largest perched (meaning above ground water) lake called Boojerim set us back a good hour, just enough to make the point impassable because of high tide. It meant a last minute new camp selection and set up by headlights. Somehow we scraped together leftovers and some cans of soup for dinner in mugs that we washed (never leave your dirty dishes for later!!) with 1/2 C of hot water. Everyone worked together this time and it went quick and easy. If not for the dew that soaked every single thing we left out and the surprise and very secret visit by the dingos it would hardly have been worth mentioning! Oh and the fact that Bart HAD to make a conference call the next morning.

I hope you enjoy the pictures up above. They should be pretty self explanatory. Since I haven't chosen them yet I can't exactly explain them all to you. I do know there will be one of large worms. They are elusive and practically impossible to catch so we were pretty proud of Bart who mastered the technique and Riley who spent hours on his knees in the surf to make his first big worm pull!

Well, it's back to the dishes, getting the boys to bed (yup, they still like the "process" of it even if it is just family prayer, a bit of a chat, a hug and a kiss and turning their fans on) and winding down myself.

I love the exercise of blogging. It's good for me to spend the time giving literary life to the experiences of my life. This is me thanking you for reading it. If you didn't I wouldn't.

That was funny. Bart and me and baby (Let poor Liz get some sleep after a very long cold night holding him in the car) edging onto the beach at high tide desparate to get up the shore to where there might be a pay phone. Amazingly we did find a phone. Bartman had the exhilirating experience of a phone call to the main office in the states on a public telephone in the middle of nowhere. He would talk for 10 second and the ZZZZZZZZZZZ the line would go dead, out of money. Basically he had to pop change in every few seconds to keep the conversation going. All to find out that the conference call had been changed to another day!! Ha! The best part was realizing that the bakery was getting an early start on the day. She agreed to serve us so we returned to camp as heros with our call accomplished and bearing goodies of muffing, eclairs, and toasted ham/cheese croissants. Mmmmm. Nice.

Hey again. Yeah, I recovered from my one whole day of babysitting darling, dimpled, diaper man. We all survived. Liz was anxious to be back to her little one. He was thrilled to find her in her bed where she belonged this morning and I was relieved to be able to hand the reins back to my gorgeous sister. Watching her mother her sweet toddler through his breakfast and morning mischiefs I felt overwhelmed with love for this amazing woman. She possesses a remarkable strength for it. She is physically strong, easily lugging his 30 + pounds all over the place. Her spirit is strong. She loves enthusiastically with kisses and smiles and hugs. Somehow she knows all the tricks for appeasing his demanding personality without spoiling him rotten. It leaves me wondering what sort of mother I was. Was I cheerful? Did my boys have the slightest idea how much I love them? Oh well, it's never too late. I can't hardly lift them a centimeter off the floor these days. They would just as soon spend the night away from me with a friend much less cry "Mama" when they think of me and realize I am not there. Most of the time I get the rolling eyes if I want to "talk" about anything too serious. But...every night they want me to tuck them in and kiss them. I still feel that tender, eternal connection that a mother has for her child and I know that their young souls need that. I hope they always will. I know I will.

As a finale note, can I confess that at long last, after nearly 10 years, I am grateful I don't have a uterus.