But wait – there’s more! It gets even better! Not only are we going to chuck you in the bush for five days straight with no showers and the sheer monotony drilling into your brain, but let’s throw in a history teacher who decides to walk one and a half k with no pants on!

We went sledding down the river in those big baggy wetsuits (and voilà, instant hips – size 18? At 170 centimetres? I don’t THINK so) with our thermals underneath. Mr History had absentmindedly forgotten to bring his, so he was wearing his bathers instead. And let me tell you, a 50+ bearded, suited professor-type in Speedos is no pretty sight. So we’ve finished sledding for the day, and are changing out of our drenched clothing into another outfit (using ‘outfit’ in the loosest of terms), and believe me they were drenched from repeatedly falling off our sleds (or my sled anyway…), even with the wetsuit on top. Seeing it was a pretty calm and humid day, Mr History decided to just throw on a shirt and some boots on top of his Speedos, fling on his backpack and keep on walking. Why oh why wasn’t he wearing any pants?? I will never look at Mr History the same way again.

Then there were the birds. On the evening of our second night out, I was sitting in my tent having a little bit of ‘quiet time’ when suddenly there’s this hoarse voiceless shrieking sound coming from somewhere in the vicinity. I’m like whoa, what the hell is that? I bolt out of the tent … and there it is again! It sounds like someone’s coughing up a hairball – in a tree. What a psycho breed of bird. And on the fourth night there’s this pathetic, drawn-out moaning sound coming from the river. And I thought how ironic it would be if it wasn’t a bird at all, if someone was actually being strangled in the bush and we were all just sitting there thinking it was a bird. God, those outback creatures …

I am never going camping of my own free will again. Not even if they paid me.

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