Boys didn’t want to go. There was yelling leaving the house, threats and scowls and disappointments, fuelled by Saturday afternoon tiredness. I told the 10-year-old he could sit in the front, program the music. The six-year-old nodded-off in the back seat before we hit the West Gate.
A boys’ road trip, of the primary school kind.
Near Little River on the Geelong Road I pulled-over, told the 10-year-old to turn the music down, how I needed a short nap. Highway driving is the best time to teach children about road safety, including driver fatigue. I kept the engine in idle; didn’t want to disturb his brother.
Light rain woke me. It activated the windscreen wipers, which spooked my watch-guard companion. He nudged me.
“Dad…”
South of Colac, in the foothills of the Otways, heading into the first forests, the road narrower, winding, the disputes and resentments left far behind, the conversation opened to camping and what would we be having for dinner and which site were we on and did I pack the hammock?
The landscape changed our moods. All of us were happy; to be in the countryside, going away.
A friend, a paediatrician, last year sent an abstract from Science Daily to a group of camping friends, about a European study of 3600 people that found contact with nature during childhood could lead to better mental health in adulthood. A recent book I read, ‘The Man Who Made Things out of Trees’, had several pages summarising latest research in environmental psychology. Most memorably, the author cited a study that “concluded that patients recovering from surgery in rooms facing natural surroundings took less medicine for pain relief than patients with a window facing a brick wall”.
Nature, it’s good for us, good for our children.
**
My inflatable mattress sprung a leak early on the first night. The six-year-old didn’t notice. Most of the night was spent rolling on the hard ground, his feet kicking at me.
It rained in the morning, quite a lot. The front annexe of the tent flooded. Clothes and beach towels got wet. A wind started to blow.
Then Zoe, next tent over, asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. Bless her.
**
My boys only wanted to camp one night. They insisted on it, bargained for it. By mid-morning, fed an omelette, the badminton net up, swinging on hammocks, playing with a group of children all of whom know each other through school, there was no turning-back. We were staying two nights, dad! We’ve changed our minds.
The camp creates its own routines, regularities. Josh forgot to bring a jumper, again. He doesn’t feel the cold, spends all his time in a T-shirt. Hugo finds a worm in the dirt; soon all the children are digging for them, feeding them in pop-up worm farms. Chali musters a group for a walk to the light house. They see two snakes on the way. The two older girls, Amber and Lulu, confirm a friendship, become inseparable. All the boys – Gabriel, Alastair, Oliver, Marcus, Ollie, Hugo – make a rolling maul, one game turning into another, then another. Francois, a tennis coach, suntans on the beach and I feel compelled to hold my tummy in. His visiting 21-year-old niece, Clotidle, studying medicine, takes photographs, steps lightly around us all. Abby looks happy to be away. Her youngest daughter, Clem, is our camping mascot. Lars offers his spreadsheet on which brand and model of mattress is the best to buy. I trust his spreadsheet.
Did I tell you I didn’t sleep well?
Then the wind picks up and it blows and blows, scything off the ocean, up a headland, brushing and bunting a stand of stringybarks we’re camped beneath, a constant roar, unsettling, unceasing, into the afternoon, all through the night, banishing some to their cars for sleep, wishing for earplugs, telling the boys a story of when I once camped up near Koscuiskco and the tent blew-out (it gave them no reassurance), and on an atlas I check now our whereabouts: on a tip of Cape Otway, further south than almost anywhere on the Australian mainland, winds unbothered by landfall between here and Patagonia, a wild place that invites wild weather.
**
In the morning it is all worth it for this: all of us at the beach, children playing in the sand, making things, building things, beside the fresh riverwater that cuts its way to the ocean. Monday morning, and this is their ‘river school’, a classroom of nature, cooperation, teamwork, negotiation, hydrology, natural sciences, the tactility of play.
A last, quick swim.
Then a running race. All of us, with handicapped starts, the pure joy of running barefoot on sand, although I’m sure all the children at the front jump early from their blocks.
On the drive home I get lost in a state forest somewhere east of Barrangarook. Trying for a shortcut, using the sun as my compass. Doesn’t matter. We take dirt roads to Birregurra, then find the bitumen to Melbourne.
Putting our boys to bed tonight, Mr 10-year-old turns to me: “Dad, I just wanted to say thanks for the weekend away.”
Was a pleasure, I tell him.