Stories Around the Globe

Yeah Yeah... (eliseanton)

Author: eliseanton

Language: English

Country: Australia

Genre: Non-fiction

Yeah Yeah...

We'd been in the country for a few years. Dad had bought his first Holden car. Christmas came and for Australians, this meant summer, and a month off work - a month or so off school for us kids.

This was the mid 70's. Tight shorts for the blokes, tight tops and those now infamous 'Budgie smugglers' (speedo-type bathers where it looks like someone has stuffed a budgerigar - a rather small parrot - down the front.)

Ten families decided it was a good idea to partake in the great Aussie tradition: Camping. Our second-hand Holden was loaded up: Tent, beds, portable stove, cupboards (dad was a cabinet maker right?) the four of us and of course a kitchen sink - a full size kitchen sink, no joke.

We formed a caravan - like camels trekking the desert, only we did it in an assortment of old Holdens and Fords, all sedans, all packed to within an inch; great loads piled high on roof racks and covered with bits of plastic and tarpaulins, in case of rain.

Ten cars, most of them having at least two kids in each and no distractions such as DVD players or hand-held game consoles or... mobile phones. Even the radio station signals gave out after a couple of hours. We could only stare out of the windows, watching the amusement of other drivers as they overtook the 'caravan', our cars too overloaded to even approach the allowed speed. Children in back seats of station wagons and cars towing caravans snickered, pointing to the bulge on our roof...

Twelve long hours later (today it's an easy six hour journey) and after several stops for communal runs to the 'bushes' and a great lunch in a park where fifty or so bodies sat mushroom-like on the lawn, eating home-made food on real plates - not sandwiches on picnic tables like the other 'small' groups of Aussies - we made it to Beachport.

This is a small town in South Australia, famous for its lobsters, or as we call them, crayfish. We kids ran amok, as the parents set about fixing up our small 'village' in the camping area. This entailed setting up tents, various tarpaulins joining the tents and a communal eating area in the middle. Need I add there was nightly singing and dancing to our 'foreign' tunes - other families staring from nearby tents as they quietly ate their dinner? You get the picture, right?

We kids scampered over sand dunes and discovered the ocean, on the other side of the small secluded Bay where the town lay, right from the get-go. We're talking ocean here right? Not Bondi Beach with the cute life-guards and the big watch-towers and the rips necessitating constant saving of unwary tourists... let alone the gorgeous vet!

Wild surf. No one in sight. We had kids who were four or five years old with us. Yep. We all rushed into that frothing water. There was a huge sand dune, ending on the water's edge, where the waves broke. We climbed that thing over and over, rolling down and ending up tossed into the surf, spluttering and half-choking. We did this every day for two weeks, setting off each morning (a long single line forming, singing Meatloaf songs and trudging over the sand dunes) often returning when the sun set. I shudder now. How did we survive? The oldest among us was only 16 and none of us could swim much. The rest were anywhere between 16 and 4. No adults, no one else to supervise our daily continued attempts at drowning or getting dragged out in a rip.

There were funny moments. Tumbled over and over by the surf, there were yelps as bathers were pulled from bodies and frantic searches ensued, reuniting floating bits of clothing with their cowering in their water owners.