Third times a charm! So we went camping at Currarong. Funny enough, when I told one of my friends we were going camping at Currarong, they said "I think you can see Currarong from where you live". Point being, we didn't go too far from home, but it was our first time camping with a tent for Christmas and a definite first for us in Australia.
It took a little while for us to understand why camping is such a big deal in Australia. Families with young children get to be social and keep the house clean for a coupe of days. The children play all day with lots of different things to do to keep them busy, and keep parents sane. There was a pool, a jumping pillow, a splash pad, a playground, open areas to run, the beach and of course other little monsters, I mean kids. We could keep the little guys entertained and we had lots of help from older kiddos that we knew and some that we didn't...I contribute that to my kiddos, they are pretty good at making friends.
Believe it or not, I have always enjoyed camping. I think its a throwback to when I was a kid and I would go camping with my folks and little sisters, I appreciated the family time and the minimal distractions. The togetherness that comes from setting up a place to live on a patch of grass and then sustaining that living overnight or over a couple nights is just kinda cool. That was camping in the US. In Australia camping is next level. A couple reasons for this, first I didn't really go to the name brand campgrounds in the US, I just went to the river or other places that had a natural attraction, and some man made toilets and showers. My "real" camping experience in Australia consisted of artificial turf, power, water and an ensuite, that's right, I had my own bathroom and shower. It is also true that I may have had a bit more extravagant of a setup than was required. My friends laughed at me when I broke out the battery powered fans. Don't get me wrong I am sure there is plenty of truly real camping in Australia, but I just gave up my cabin...you know, baby steps. It is kinda funny, when I think about camping in Australia, I think the outback. I think "real deal" camping. If this is the "real deal", I'll camp once a month.
My setup was a Kodiak Canvas Cabin Tent (12' x 9' - that's 366 x 275 cm for my Aussie friends) with the awning and the enclosure which added an 8' x 8' room for my kitchen (244 x 244 cm). Additional tent items were a canvas tarp for the main tent floor, and a vinyl tarp for the kitchen floor. Sleeping was a little bougie with XL cots for me and the hubby, and a bunkbed cot for the kiddos. Although the campground had barbies available, we brought our own and our own camp stove. Needless to say, this isn't the type of camping that you hike a trail and setup at the end of the day, if you could hike in all of the stuff we used, you might just be a super hero. The amenities were nice, but in our quest to experience "real camping" we never used the power, probably a lot harder on ourselves than we should have been. We definitely used the en suite...anything else would have been uncivilised, LOL! I will blame that one on COVID for now.
First night was cold! I didn't expect that, the hubby decided to leave the "windows" cracked thinking the tent would get stuffy, but lets just say that by about 1 am, we had closed and zipped up everything we could, to include our sleeping bags. I almost thought I would need to grab one of the kiddos to keep warm, but they took care of that by taking turns getting up and climbing onto my cot. For the record, the kids had their own sleeping bags, and they were nice and warm. The novelty of camping is what drove them to leave their comfortable bunks and hop into the cot with me. That said, I enjoyed the extra heat. By the second night we had figured it out and everyone slept comfortably in their own cots and bunks. It was so awesome to have a night when I could sleep in my own bed..er...cot without a child climbing into bed that I would go camping just for this reason. They did not wake up until morning, it was amazing! Not a lot of lessons learned with the rest of the experience. Maybe a smaller propane tank, as the large one was probably too large. We could have managed our icebox a little better, but other than that, I was pretty happy with the setup. Oh and we definitely needed a roof box to carry all of the stuff we had, a tow trailer would have been better, but we didn't have a tow hitch on our car. Now I know why every vehicle in Australia has a tow hitch. Even the small cars tow camping trailers.
This is the holiday break and we came home wondering what we were going to do with the kiddos for the next five weeks. I got online and booked another stay at Bendalong Holiday Haven. I'm just saying this is fun for the entire family and its a good way to explore bits of Australia. I will add a camping list for you of items we took. I will also add a couple links that we used for our gear. Overall we loved the experience, and our kids have already asked multiple times the are we going camping agin. Oh and become a member to save a few dollars at the Big 4 and Holiday Haven. This was news to me.
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