Marion had for a while been advocating a camping trip and Nicole took this to heart to the extent that she invited many people from work, and many people from play, many of the former acceding, many of the latter declining. The veritable smorgasbord of fellow short-stay camperoonies created booking difficulties and where we were originally headed for Tallebudgera down on the Gold Coast, for various reasons and a lot of casting around we found ourselves headed for a campsite out at Kenilworth up in the Mary Valley, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, with a promise of idyllic river-swimming and countryside camping reinforced by the most cursory inspection of the web-based marketing literature.
The elements dealt us an interesting hand in the form of a heatwave, which promised to roll it's velvet glove over us on the very day of our departure so we resolved to get an early start and in a near-miracle of logistical organisation by SWMBO, we were away, fully packed, by 0930 Zulu.
The car was packed to the gunnels (an optional extra we were really proud to have negotiated) to the extent that there was no room for Eloise, and she had to go in Marion's car, fist-pumping all the way probably.
We were expecting there to be a reasonably massive exodus which normally creates a pretty good bung in Bruce's passage, but we thought to chance our arms. We weren't (or were, depending on whether you're more satisfied with being proven correct or having a clear run) disappointed when we ran into the first knot of traffic around Deception Bay, and when Our Little Treasure started piping up about being stuck and thirsty and hungry and unhappy, and the volume started to increase, we took the strategically sensible but tactically incompetent decision to leave the Bruce at Morayfield to go off-piste.
In true style, we Gavinated our long-cut which proved just as bunged up as the Bruce if not more so, compounding our errors by erring further from the beaten track, missing turnings, winding up on a dirt-track somewhere in the middle of the Beerburrum State Forest.
Not to be discouraged by this sort of nonsense, we made our way back to civilisation in the form of Steve Irwin Way, and then for some reason took a scenic route over the mountains through Maleny and Montville, and over past the Mapleton Falls to another winding dirt track which frankly scared the crap out of me and my navigatrix as we edged our way down a single-lane dusty ribbon of what could only be loosely described as road which wound its way down the mountain side, a cliff on the right, a precipice on the left, tailgated by a wanker in a Commodore with a death-wish (for us).
We breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the bottom, a further sigh of relief when we found the campsite, and a further sigh of relief when we found Joan waiting for us at the camp site with Marion, Hannah and Eloise who had arrived there an hour before us.
When we got out of the car it was utterly stinking hot so we made camp in the stinking heat, Lyra playing in the car, pushing this knob, pulling the lever, switching this light on, tooting that horn with her tummy. The car was covered in dust from our motorised mountaineering long-short-cut adventure.
Camperoonies trickled in bit by bit, and soon we had our own little canvas village, industriously unpacking, constructing, and complaining about the weather.
We decided to cool off in the river. It was too hot to walk, apparently, so we got into the car to drive the hundred metres to the accessible with the beach and the waterhole.
I turned the key, and the car clicked, the dashboard lit up, and all the lights flashed. The needles shot round to the far end of the dials, then returned to zero. The car did not start.
I tried again. Same result. The one male in attendance came to look, drew breath through his teeth, tradesman-like. Could be battery? Hopefully?
Oh, crappy crap on a crapping crapstick.
No comments:
Post a Comment