07 May 2013
Words Tim Admin

Turning the Tables on the Great Outdoors

When your children are young, you are sometimes possessed by an urge to involve them in a bonding experience. No one knows why normally rational adults are seized by these impulses, ones that invariably involve The Great Outdoors for children dread them and hide under their beds at the first mention of ``doing something together as a family’’. They only thing they wish to do together as a family is to be left in their rooms plugged firmly into social media sites via their laptops. Once the bonding notion has become fixed in a male’s head, however, he is not easily dissuaded for he sees himself as the head of the tribe whose role it is to fend for his brood in the wild. The last time I was seized by this particular form of madness was when I recalled, for no reason, a caravan park where I had once stayed in northern New South Wales. Caravan parks are a link with the past. In an era when many Australians reach for their passports at the mention of holidays, they offer a quintessentially Australian egalitarian experience. Nowhere levels social barriers like the communal shower block in a caravan park. There, shaving elbow to elbow with complete strangers or waiting for a vacant shower cubicle, all creatures great and small are equal. "It will be wonderful" I beamed, announcing my Great Outdoors plan one evening. "I’ll borrow my mate’s motorhome and we’ll have a weekend by the sea. No high rise, no lifts, no breakfast buffet, just self catering and the crash of the surf." This announcement was greeted with groans of despair. "Will there be Wifi?" they chorused. "No computers. No Ipads" I cried, triggering a mass exodus from the dining room followed by the sound of bedroom doors being slammed. The last time I’d stayed in a caravan park had been with a mate and his girlfriend. He was new to the experience and had spent a large amount of money on a huge tent and everything that went with it. What a shame that when after a drive of several hours we arrived at the park and went to erect his luxurious new tent, we discovered he had left the tent pegs at home. Negotiating my friend’s motorhome down the highway was easy enough. Parking it the caravan park proved to be more interesting as it was the size of a cruise liner. After quite a lot of shouting, yelling and contradictory directions which if followed would have seen me parked in the surf, we were plugged into the powered site and ready to set up camp and enjoy the Great Outdoors. The roof that which extended from the side of the motorhome like a bat’s wing proved to be a challenge and I never did get it right secured properly. Fortunately, there was no wind. Had there been I had the uncomfortable feeling that the motorhome would have gone sailing through the sky and come to rest somewhere west of Alice Springs. All, however, had gone reasonably well and quietly pleased with myself, I decided to set up a folding table and chairs, the better to relax beneath the bat wing. I was ahead on points and had almost wrestled the table into submission when it struck back, snapping shut and trapping my hand. This hurt quite a bit and sent me flapping around the van site, table still attached to my hand, bellowing in agony. My partner eventually caught me, crash tackled me to the ground and using her feet, forced open the jaws of the table which had a bite like a saltwater crocodile. She found a supply of Band Aids and the bleeding staunched, I abandoned the motorhome and announced we were all going to the nearby pub for dinner. The next morning, the caravan gods smiled upon us. We cooked breakfast without setting fire to anything and with the sun shining from a cloudless sky, walked the 100m to the beach. The kids spent the day swimming and doing kids’ things that did not involve crouching over a keyboard in a darkened bedroom while we sprawled in our director’s chairs and soaked up the warmth. At day’s end we braved the communal showers and aglow with that wonderful post-shower feel of freshness that comes after a day at the beach, had drinks beneath the bat wing as the sun cast its last shadows over the park. "I love five star resorts, " said my partner, "but you might be on to something here. When the kids leave home we should do more of this." "Jordan", I said turning to my partner’s first born. "When are you thinking of leaving home?" "Never" he replied. Ah well. It was a nice thought.