07 October 2008

Camping Labour Day Weekend: Macquarie Woods

Welcome to another edition of Australian Geographic. While Lorne Greene is on holiday, Jen Quill will be your correspondent reporting from Macquarie Woods, in NSW.

Give me sun. Give me gum trees. Give me rosellas and roos. Give me watermelon pips, white bread-sandwiches and silver long toms strung from hand-held fishing lines. Give me balmy summer nights under a canvas canopy. Give me mosquito coils, guy ropes, sleeping bags and the distant sound of someone snoring. (I don't kiss and tell, so you won't hear from me that Ginny Weasley and Scotty snore like chainsaws) Give me all of this and I’ll give you 1001 golden childhood memories pegged out in camping grounds nationwide.


Australia is a country of campers. Throughout the human occupation of our wide brown land we’ve headed to beach-side campsites in droves. However, my heart lies in the bush. I love and advocate tree-change, not sea-change. Camping is essential to the Australian experience. Camping connects you directly to the earth and the sky, the vegetation, the animals, the birds and especially each other. The strength of the wind, the power of nature…it overwhelms you. You understand the scale of things and your own place.


It’s the notion of this ancient way of life connected to nature and the elements – and the links that are forged between people living in such a way – that continues to resonate for modern campers. Europeans may have brought tents to Australia but they did not bring camping. Aboriginal people are great campers. The middens along the coast tell us how they moved from one good spot to another, visiting the same sites year after year. And the camper’s eye notes what well-chosen sites they are: near the beach but out of the wind; near a creek but sheltered behind the dunes.


Well, Scotty and I have taken a leaf out of the Aboriginal book and have ourselves found our favourite places of heaven here on Earth, and they are presenting themselves in the form of Macquarie Woods and the Bridle Track in Central West country New South Wales. (Although I still love the Brindabella's of Canberra, the Ranges of Broken Hill and the forests of Tasmania, but the secret hidey-holes Scott and I have discovered and laid claim to are predominately in the central west of NSW)



As a species we’ve been looking at – and wondering about – the night sky and other aspects of the natural world for a million years or more. Our western stories of the sublime, everlasting perfection of heaven and (from watching volcanoes) the eternal damnation of hell probably arose in this way. Humans are both blessed and blighted with an almost insatiable curiosity and a need to know why things are as they are – it’s what makes us human – and there’s nothing more puzzling than our experience of the night sky.


What better place to see this thing of beauty and awe than when camping in Australia?!


As you have gathered, Scott and I took the kids and went bush this past weekend. We are feeling relaxed, rejuvenated and reconnected. We are including some of our photos from the weekend, and as usual, there are very little of Scott. I make an apology now for this which must seem to some as a deliberate act of neglect on my part, however the simple matter is that Scott loves to take photos and is an amatuer photographer of both growing and prodigious skill. (Exhibit A: the 6,000 photos taken in one month in Newfoundland recently. Exhibit B: 300 photos taken over a day and half this past weekend!)


What I do hope is demonstrated to you is the fun and carefree time we are having exploring our little neck of the woods and sharing that journey together. We are simply getting out there; and no better fun has been had.

Signing off, for Australian Geographic, I'm Jen Quill. Lorne Greene returns with you next week when he looks at the World Heritage Rainforests of NSW.

2 comments:

Lost Newf said...

I don't know why when I publish my post has varying font types and sizes- just to let you know I am not deliberately attempting to emphasise some statements more than others.....

Clicky said...

Gee I love the pics!! Wherever did you get the idea for the awesome collages?! hahaha

Love you!!

PS - please tell Scotty he is going to wear that little camera out before long at this rate :)