camping

[Red Back Dragon Dude]

One simple camping trip gone wrong as per usual for me haha Well i got back home at least! boy oh boy howdy have i had an interesting week where being a Dude has more or less kept me together even if i was not showing it i abided in i guess ways that may or may not be approved of but yeah.

All started out well we packed my Landcrusier and got out of town by 9pm and arrived on the coast at a place called gillards beach at 1am , set up our camp in pitch black and slept well till 6am had a cuppa tea with a friendly dutch couple camped near us and here's where it starts to get a little squiffy i had noticed a "new" noise coming from my truck, my truck is 20-sompthing years old so noises are normal but nontheless you notice new ones either way i put it out of my mind we broke camp and made our way north to Bermagui town for a visit to the war memorial and then onwards to narooma town to check in with Parks and Wildlife to see about any road closures in Duea National park our next camping destination, through the town of Moryua we hit Duea and made our way deep inside too Duea River campsite.. oddly deserted we quickly realized that this was because the nearby drop bog (toilet) had sompthing seriously wrong and smelly going on so we made our way further down a fire trail to Dry River camp site in a wooded valley close to a river ( we have a knack for names shaddup)
and started to set up camp which is about the point shit hit the ventilator my partner noticed a tick on a wooden railing near our camp not much we thought.. then another and another turns out we had wandered into a hive of ticks these things were everywhere - quick fun fact about Australian ticks http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/pests/parasites/Pages/ticks.aspx they have a Toxin that can paralyze you - so stuff it we decided to brake camp again and just pack it in and go home , get the truck running again and its gearbox has a catastrophic failure this thing shat the bucket hardcore it sounded like a meat grinder eating a bus full of cats at this point i allso notice i have a little clinger on when i brush my wrist on my door and my hand goes numb , i have a damn tick right on my wrist joint SO with a numb hand/arm i crunch into 1st gear (1st , 3rd and reverse were the only gears i could get) and spanked it back up the fire trail and then the hours trip down a narrow dirt road too moruya hospital where i presented to have the tick removed and was damn near beaten up by a tough nurse that must have figured i was a hard case and got me to check for other ticks , we finish up at the hospital and i then manage to get my noise machine down to a mechanic in the town i knew who could hold my truck then settled in at the Adelaide pub/hotel in town for the night and then spend the next day tracking down another gearbox and a mechanic that has the gear to even work on the thing.

soooooooo yeah getting my truck back hopefully next week sorry for my terrible grammar thats the way its going at the moment sadly.

Truth be told stepping back from it i think we had a great time , we have a camping story that we can tell the rest of our lives and we got to spend a few days in Moruya a fantastic coastal town with mild sunny weather and a cracking local ale that had me near dizzy after only 3 schooners.

[Reverend Al]

One simple camping trip gone wrong as per usual for me...Truth be told stepping back from it i think we had a great time , we have a camping story that we can tell the rest of our lives...

That's the funny thing about a road trip/vacation/holiday gone wrong--dealing with it at the time is usually a pain in the ass, but time allows you to look back and recognize the humor in the situation which, as you wrote, gives you a great story to tell.

Similarly, everyone I know who has ever owned an air-cooled Volkswagen has at least one great story that involves either mechanical problems or people they met on a trip.  Everyone.  I've had three of them over the years and I wish I had one today--they're fun cars, but you'd better know how to fix 'em, or at least temporarily patch 'em up, if you want to make it home.