{"id":487,"date":"2009-06-09T00:31:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T14:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=487"},"modified":"2014-05-12T09:14:05","modified_gmt":"2014-05-11T23:14:05","slug":"camping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=487","title":{"rendered":"Camping"},"content":{"rendered":"

I flew back to Brisbane for the Queens Birthday long weekend.\u00a0 Not only was it a chance to spend some time with Jen, we were both also invited to a trip to northern New South Wales with some friends for a camping trip.\u00a0 Jen hadn’t gone camping for about six years and I flat out could not remember the last time I went camping, period.<\/p>\n

I was glad to have some friends along to help me get by.\u00a0 You can probably tell from the number of blog posts I’ve written related to Lost and video gaming, but I know next to nothing about the practicalities of making a fire, setting up a tent or going fishing.\u00a0 The camping idea seemed <\/em>appealling enough though so we commited to a 3 day trip.<\/p>\n

\"Wooden

Woodenbong, NSW<\/p><\/div>\n

We drove down to a site near Woondenbong, NSW which itself is located near Bald Knob Forest.\u00a0 The drive itself takes you through some trademark Queensland rural areas (mostly brown) and then into northern New South Wales itself (slightly greeny brown).\u00a0 Woodenbong is a tiny-ass town with two main streets.\u00a0 There is a butchers, a petrol station and a general store.\u00a0 I often wonder about the practicalities of people who live in places like this.\u00a0 Where do they get their DVDs?<\/p>\n

I learned that I may have falsely attributed the stereotype of strong work ethic to rural workers in Australia.\u00a0 In Woodenbong, they seem to keep pretty easy hours.\u00a0 We were just in time to stop at a petrol station, as the owner was shutting the store for the weekend at noon.\u00a0 Why so early?\u00a0 What else would he do on the weekend besides going to the butchers and the general store?<\/p>\n

\"Woodenbong

Woodenbong Newsagency and Service Station<\/p><\/div>\n

The weekend itself was pretty enjoyable.\u00a0 Over the three days, I felt like we got the complete camping experience.\u00a0 The site itself was a massive hilly pasture that had a fishing hole, a toilet that was a kilometre away and it was competely overrun by cows that shit absolutely everywhere<\/em>.\u00a0 It also rained a fair bit.\u00a0 I was actually quite pleased with all these developments.\u00a0 I wanted to validate my camping experience by facing a certain level of discomfort.\u00a0 It wasn’t completely uncivilised however:\u00a0 we did have a billy with us so I was able to drink plenty of tea.<\/p>\n

\"Billy,

The billy: we sang as we watched and waited for it to boil.<\/p><\/div>\n

We travelled as a group of eight,\u00a0 of which all four other guys were seasoned campers.\u00a0 I felt like it could’ve been a little weird that all these dudes were down with their fire-making, fishing and four wheel driving skills while I contributed absolutely nothing at all but they were very inclusive and happy to show me the ropes.\u00a0 Similarly, they were all very polite and appreciative of how much better I was at Trivial Pursuit when we played a few rounds around the camp fire one night.\u00a0 We all played to our strengths.<\/p>\n

\"Fishing:

Fishing: 90% beer drinking, 10% casting<\/p><\/div>\n

What I was happy to discover about camping is that the gist of whole experience is waiting.\u00a0 Whether its waiting for a fish to bite, a billy to boil, or cooking a tin of Stag Chilli, most of the time you’re sitting around enjoying a long day away from the city and doing not a lot.\u00a0 This appeals to me greatly.<\/p>\n

\"I

I imagine camp fires would probably make for pretty photos if I had an SLR camera<\/p><\/div>\n

That pretty much sums up the long weekend of camping.\u00a0 I’m back in Sydney now typing this in my apartment.\u00a0 I think I’ll go to bed after this.\u00a0 As much as I enjoyed the brief weekend stopover, it’ll be nice to get down to the business of finishing my work in Sydney and coming home to Jen and getting married in a few weeks time.\u00a0 Not long to go now.<\/p>\n

\"Wish

Wish You Were Here: A Weekend of Beer and Fishing<\/p><\/div>\n

NB:\u00a0 When you post a comment on the FAT website for the first time, we have an anti-spam protection that requires admin approval for the comment to appear.\u00a0 After the first approval, you won’t require any further approvals.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I flew back to Brisbane for the Queens Birthday long weekend.\u00a0 Not only was it a chance to spend some time with Jen, we were both also invited to a trip to northern New South Wales with some friends for a camping trip.\u00a0 Jen hadn’t gone camping for about six years and I flat out …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-camping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14686,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/14686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}