The ill-fated purchase. Even if it's a 10 second pop-up tent you've still gotta sleep in it for 8 hrs.
One Night.
We got through one night camping. If we wanted character building, we got it. We’re built. Made. Set for life.
First up, it stormed. For two hours. And the power went out. So we sat, from 7 till 9 pm, in the front of the car, watching bad outtakes from the days video blogs and eatirng dip and chips for dinner.
When we finally crawled into our tents, exhausted (at like 10pm), we fell straight to sleep.
Around 1am I woke up. Something was wrong. I was… cold? COLD?
Having spent the last week in Tamworth and surrounds in mid january, cold was a foreign sensation to me. How could I be cold?
Apparently Nundle has just enough altitude to get nippy in the evenings, even in summer. Especially if youre in a tent. With no bedding. All I had brought was a pillow, thinking it would be too warm to call for an actual blanket. And Hughie was bringing sleeping bags. Hughie?
The following screenplay was enacted through the wall of my tent, at 2am.
H: “Grace?”
G: “Yeah?”
H: “Are you cold?”
G: “Yeah.”
H: …
H: “I forgot the sleeping bags.”
G: …
G: …
Grace cannot reply. Grace is dead of hypothermia.
And scene.
To Hughie’s immense credit he did give me the only available “linen”, the big dusty black cloth wrapped around the gear in the car, to wrap myself in. He just sucked it up and went (shivering) back to sleep. Whatta hero.
The next day in a Quirindi coffee shop we gave a serious appraisal of the events of the night before and decided to book a cabin.
A quick look at the concrete campsites of the Quirindi Caravan Park confirmed our decision.