Ozzie Camping!

And so it came to be that Kate asked me if I was interested to go out camping for a few days with some of the people from the Geelong Cup, and other people as well, and sure I was! When doing an exchange in a foreign country, it's funny how one seems to meet a lot of people from other countries except the specific country you're in. So, it would certainly be fun to spend some time with Australians and experience the Aussie way of camping as well, whatever that would turn out to be!

It all started with Kate, Tim (whom I have no picture of, incredible) and me heading down the Great Ocean Road to Johanna Beach campsite late last Tuesday. The other's, including Colin and Nghia, had already been camping since Monday morning. We didn't have any exact knowledge of where they were, though, and as it was getting late and mobile phones were no use this far away from settlement, it took us a good while to finally get there. It was already dark when there, so that evening can pretty much be summed up in sitting around a campfire on the beach until we crawled into a few big tents Colin had brought with him.

Next morning I had a taste of a toast with a fried egg centre and bacon atop. Australians seem to love bacon(not everyone though!), and they tend to cook whatever they barbecue a lot longer than we do back home, actually until the surface is all charred. This one was cocked just right for my taste, though!

Jayden relaxing after a long night of drinking and wrestling. That's not our camp there on the right, but you get the idea. They don't have the "jokamiehen oikeus" or "allemansrätt"(Freedom to roam, meaning the right to walk, camp and pick fruits, mushrooms etc. anywhere) over here, so camping seem sto usually take place on areas reserved for it. In a way it feels different to camp like this as opposed to home, but it's not that I have too much experience of it (except camping in the army).

Johanna Beach is a beutiful, but dangerous part of the southern coast. Many rocks hide in the shallow shore water and from what I've heard it's also famous for it's huge waves and strong currents. The surfing competitions held on the famous Bells beach are held here if Bells isn't wavy enough. 

At this point the beach also has a river floating through it in a S-shaped curve, making it a naturally cleaner, non salty and less dangerous place to swim if the sea seems like too much.

The camping crew featuring (from the right) Todd, Nghia, Qantas, Tim, Kate, Jayden and Colin, me behind the camera (yeah who would've guessed, right?!).

Have a look at those waves and rocks and you can confirm that the beach seems to have earned its reputation.

In the afternoon we packed the gear, left the camping grounds and headed over to the town of Port Compbell. On the way we stopped by the Twelve Apostles and some other places I'd visited already a few times before, as someone from the group had apparently never been here. Now that was unexpected!

Loch and Gorge.

A while after we'd arrived in Port Campbell it dawned upon me that the town seemed surprisingly familiar. I'd been here before, and it was on that Great Ocean Road trip I did with Cristina right after she'd arrived in May! Suddenly all bits and pieces fell together. We had a nap with Kate on the beach while the others played beach cricket, I really caught a good sleep as the night in the tent had been pretty cold as I'd overestimated the thermal capabilities of my borrowed sleeping bag. We also met a few new people on the beach who joined with us for the evening (or we joined them, however one prefers to look at it).

In the evening we enjoyed a barbecue with some salad and sausages in one of the houses some of the locals lived. I'd bought some kangaroo earlier to share on the trip and this was the time to cook it and give it a try. It was delicious, and I'm getting a bigger and bigger fan of roo meat the more I eat it. I even tried just cooking it on the pan the other day and it still tasted amazing, just by itself!

It's here where the real party began. Without going into too much detail, I'll just leave it to the fact that I sure had a really good time that whole night!

Five minutes after entering the local bar I again realized that this looks too darn familiar. It was the same bar we spent the evening in on my earlier trip. What a coincidence, I thought, until I realized that there probably aren't too many bars in town.

Colin and me (no, that's Nghia to the left) played pool against our local friends and somehow managed to win the game, even though we were pretty drunk at that point. Guess the other team wasn't exactly sober either.

As the bar suddenly closed at 1 or 2am, someone cracked the great idea of going down to the pier and jumping into the water. Now whilst I did feel the temptation of doing so, and the water probably would be warmer than that in New Zealand where I'd swam before, the house was still a fifteen minute walk away from the pier and the air quite chilly, so no, I didn't. I'll even things up back home in winter if I get the opportunity. A few others did take a dip though, and shivered the rest of the night.

So, now I know something about camping in Oz, even though the camping-part of this trip was shorter than one full day. Whether or not to call sleeping in a tent on a official camping site just outside your car and with gas-cookers "real" camping, I don't know. To be fair though, free time camping out in the nature back home is something I've never really done for real, so I will need to give that a go before I can make any comparisons. Next summer might be time for that!

Thanks y'all for the camp and the bar night, it was great fun!