As we are considering going camping in the Christmas Holidays we thought we would give the kids and our camping gear a trial run. We picked a spot close to home so if it all turned to custard we could go home easily.
The weather forcast was threatening occasional scattered showers and the odd thunderstorm, but the sky was clear and blue so we set up camp. It was about 35 degrees (damn hot and humid). The tents were surprisingly straightforward and we soon had a camping site that we were pleased with.
A couple of bushwalks in the heat of the afternoon (6.6kms) and we took our too hot and tired bodies back to camp to cook dinner. Wayne (Masterchef of outdoor cooking) cooked us a delicious dinner and we were relaxing and heating up water for the dishes when I noticed a couple of lightning flashes in the darkening sky. We hurried through the dishes and I had just got them dry when the stom hit with all it's force. Wayne dumped the dishes water on the fire to put it out because the wind got really wild and the thunder and lightening was constant. The rain then dumped on us and a big gust of wind pulled most of the tent pegs out. I huddled with the kids in their tent as they were all hiding under their pillows (whimpering).
Wayne did an awesome job of packing everything into his ute. We then drove home to showers and warm dry beds. Went back this morning and amazed to see that our tents were still up and relatively dry inside. With the benefit of hindsight we could have probably stayed the night, but we had no way of knowing how many more storms were going to pass over us. Since the tents were nearly dry, we packed them up and went home to do lots of washing.
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