Well, they may not be llamas, but we did have a family of black swans come and check out our campsite this weekend! So I can now add the title "swan rustler" to my growing Guiding resume of strange jobs... but I am getting ahead of myself... let me start back at the beginning...Jen and I were invited to go camping up in Chiltern, which is a little town about 3.5 hours by train from Melbourne. The local Guides were hosting a region-level camp (I think this is about the same as an area-level camp) for girls in units in the surrounding area. In total there were about 70 girls, aged anywhere from 9-14, at the event.
I took the early train out on Friday morning and arrived in Chiltern around noon. (Jen had to work at the last minute so she joined us in the evening.) The ride out was interesting - there is not a lot of suburbia here (or at least, not in the North-American sense), so the transition between city and countryside was abrupt to say the least! This was the first chance I'd really had to see the countryside around Melbourne. The land is mostly very flat, with some low rolling hills. Most of the land has been cleared for farming and I passed through miles of pastures with cows and sheep and horses. I saw very few planted crops and almost no water. The small towns that we passed through on the train were pretty, but everything was dusty and dry - the signs of the long drought were obvious to me. In some towns the only paved roads were the ones which were over the train tracks.
I was met on the platform in Chiltern by Susan, the Guider who'd invited me to the camp, and her daughter Ashely. In true Aussie fashion, the very first thing we did was to go over to another Guider's house (Lynn), and "have a cuppa" (i.e., a cup of tea and misc. snacks). There I was introduced to Lynn and Gwen, who would be running the camp weekend. After tea, Susan, Ashley and I headed out again for a short bit of touring. We drove to the top of Mount Pilot, the tallest mountain (really, it was a big hill) in the area. It had a great lookout at the top, from which we could see much of the countryside. I posted the best pics from there (and the rest of the weekend) in a new album titled "Barree Region Camp". I spotted a new type of gum tree - whose name I've unfortunately forgotten - which is only exciting because it's the type of leaves often used in decorative flower arrangements. Very cool.
Susan then dropped me off at the Chiltern Guide Hall, just a stone's throw away from the train station, as she had to go back to work. I spent the rest of the afternoon with Gwen and Lynn and helped them set up patrol boxes for the camp. Gwen took me back to her house for afternoon tea. I enjoyed watching the large flock of galahs (large pink, white and grey parrots) which were feasting on the seeds from the hay bales in the field behind the house. Then it was time to head back to the campsite, as the kids were about to arrive!
The camp was really interesting. First, let's talk about the tents. The girls were camping in "cork" tents, which for a while I thought had something to do with their construction, but I found out afterwards that they were called cork tents because they were purchased with money that the Guides made from recycling wine corks (there is an Australian version of the Bag-a-Cork initiative that Ontario Guides are doing). The tents were made of canvas and HUGE - you could comfortably sleep six people inside. Like our canvas tents, these ones had no floor. They weren't ridge tents though - they were constructed more like a six-legged version of a dining shelter. The frames were made of square metal rods, all the same length (so, unlike the dining shelters we have at Woolsey, we didn't have to spend hours making sure the right poles were in the right spots - any pole section could be used at any spot in the frame. COOL.) There were no flies for the tents, which struck me as strange - but then again, this part of Australia sure doesn't get rain anything like what we get back home!
The girls were put into patrols, with each patrol sharing a sleeping tent, a food storage tent, and a cooking shelter. Jen and I found it very strange that most of the food (with the exception of meat and milk) was stored in tents. Some groups had eskies (coolers) for their food, others did not. We kept explaining to people how we couldn't ever do this in Ontario - between the bears, raccoons, skunks, and squirrels, we'd have no food left to eat if we stored it in this manner! But there are no animals here (except for the odd possum) who will go into tents after food, so this was the local practice. Jen and I couldn't do it. We had brought snacks with us for the train ride, and we stored them on top of the fridge in the hall. Come to think of it, I'm not sure that was much better - the hall's doors were left open all weekend long, including overnight, so the girls could go to the bathroom. So if there had been any marauding animals about, they could've gone in too!
Now, having said this, the only animals we had problems with at all during the weekend were the swans. I think we must have been camped on part of their feeding grounds or something, because they came over to check us out a few times. The shot above shows the dad investigating what we were eating for breakfast on Saturday morning. He was not afraid of us AT ALL and it took some serious convincing by a couple of us leaders to get him to move on his way. It is a little disconcerting having a large black bird walk straight into your campsite and start nibbling stuff off the tables. :-)
The girls did all of the food preparation and cooking, with the exception of the Friday dinner and Sunday lunch. Apparently the patrol leaders (Pathfinder-aged girls, for the most part) were each responsible for doing the shopping for their group. The leaders circulated among the patrols each meal... typically the patrols would invite a leader to share a meal with them. Since Jen and I were somewhat celebrities (being from Canada and all), we had many invites (yay!) and so we ate with a different patrol for each meal. Some of the patrols needed a little more help/supervision than others; I helped one group cook their Saturday dinner because they couldn't get their stove lit, but then the group I was with for Sunday breakfast had everything cooked and on the table and were only waiting for me to begin eating!
Most of the activities throughout the weekend were planned by the leaders, but each patrol was responsible for planning an activity to run for themselves for an hour on Saturday morning. Jen and I were invited to join a group who was going on a bush walk (nature walk), and so we followed them as they walked around the fields and the little lake. I included a photo of the lake on Facebook. Apparently we were lucky to see it with water in it - like most of the bodies of water here, this lake is seasonal and only has water some of the time. (The term "great lake" means something completely different in Australia than it does in Canada - here it means a lake that always has water in it!) There were lots of birds to be seen in and around the lake, including the swans, ducks, coots, and willy wagtails (little black and white birds whose tails are as long as their bodies... when they land, they wag their tails back and forth and they're so CUTE!). Then when we returned to the main camp, the senior Guides invited us over to try out their food challenges. These included digging through a bowl of flour with our tongues to fish out jelly beans (eeew, but I did it) and drinking a concoction made of fruit loops, lemon juice, milk, and pepper (which I politely declined).
The theme of the weekend was "Circus", and one of the highlights was having Sparky the Clown come to visit on Saturday afternoon. He entertained the girls for two hours with stories and magic tricks. He was GOOD. I also liked how he spent time telling the girls how he became a clown, and how much studying and reading he had to do in order to learn his tricks. Unsurprisingly, he was a hit with the kids. The camp also included all the typical things that we do at home - the girls made crafts (stilts), played games (including initiative games and wide games with us), and had a campfire. Although we weren't in charge of the campfire, we were invited to do a number of songs. I am working hard to infect all of Australia with the song "Today is Monday", which was so popular at Woolsey last summer. And Jen shared the traumatic story behind "Zum Gali Gali" and then had kids following her all weekend saying "llama, llama, llama, llama..." ha ha!
I continue to struggle to interpret Australian weather accurately. It was sunny and over 30 degrees every day, but at night the temperature dipped to 10C or below. I (stupidly) didn't pack my long underwear for this weekend, and I sure regretted it! We were sleeping on camp cots inside the tents, and so I was cold all over! I got up halfway through the first night and went into the hall, filled my Nalgene bottle with hot water, and took it back to bed, which helped a little bit. It was warmer the second night but not by much. I have learned my lesson. I need to pack clothes for 10 degrees colder AND warmer than what the weather is calling for!
The one real complaint I have from the weekend was the FLIES. Down here there is an expression about "doing the Aussie wave" and now I understand what that's all about! Australian blow flies are like nothing else on this planet. They LOVE moisture - and since there is precious little of it in the countryside, they cluster around everything that has it - including your eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. And they're persistent! The little buggers just don't give up. So imagine the worst possible black fly or mosquito day you've ever had out in the woods, and then multiply the number of flies by a factor of about 50, and that's what we were dealing with as far as the flies went this weekend. They were most active in the heat of the day and they were HORRIBLE at mealtimes. We prepared and ate meals (especially dinners) as fast as possible to keep the flies from crawling over everything. I had to constantly wave my hand over my dinner to keep the flies off - and had to inspect every bite of spaghetti to ensure I wasn't ingesting any extra protein. GROSS. We were assured that the flies were pretty bad for this time of the year, but that they actually would get worse as the summer wore on. ICK. At least they didn't bite, but still...! Once the sun went down the flies went away and we got some relief. Thank goodness!
Even with the flies though, it was a great weekend and a wonderful learning experience. We handed out Woolsey crests to all the girls, and Canadian flag crests to all the leaders. We were surprised to recieve thank-you gifts from the Chiltern Guiders at the end of the camp - really, we were just grateful that we'd been invited to go in the first place! But I now finally have a travel mug for the rest of my trip - a beautiful blue Guides Victoria mug, to be exact - and my collection of Australian patches continues to grow.
We were SO TIRED on the train ride home. Where the train out on Friday had been almost empty, the train home was full. Jen and I were sharing a four-seater arrangement (two seats facing front, two facing back) with two other guys and we sure felt squished! There was a swim team or something in our car and they were hyper and noisy the whole way home. It sure was a blessing to get off the train at Southern Cross station, transfer to our local train, and get home at last.
And I would've slept in this morning, too, except that Jen got a phone call at 7:30 this morning - for a job for tomorrow (GRRRR... why couldn't they have waited until 10am to do phone calls for tomorrow's jobs!)... and then when I went out of our room to go to the bathroom, I discovered that the toilet in the bathroom across the hall from our room was overflowing and there was water soaking into the hall carpet. So Jen and I did our good deed for the day and cleaned that all up. Not like there's a plunger in this house or anything. GAH.
