(Scanned from a 35mm slide; camera Olympus Trip)
Exactly thirty-seven years ago - one year before we were married - my girlfriend and I decided to spend Easter fishing for trout at the base of Tantangara Dam, in the Snowy Mountains of NSW. This is where the Murrumbidgee River rises and starts its journey to the Murray-Darling system.
So we packed the little 1965 VW Beetle with the hired 2-man tent, sleeping bags, fishing gear and supplies and, on a windy and cold Good Friday we departed Toongabbie, in Sydney's western suburbs, and headed off down the Hume Highway into what was to be an abbreviated "dirty weekend" (all our friends reckoned that's why we were going away, as the GF was living with her parents).
(Scanned from a 35mm slide; camera Olympus Trip)
It was the coldest Easter for many, many years.
Not only did we have a howling gale to contend with but also sleet. It was snowing at a slightly higher altitude than where we were situated.
Although it was a very picturesque location, the natural beauty was completely unappreciated by both of us as we froze our backsides off. I even had to create a makeshift wind-break by stringing a tarp between two trees in an effort to reduce the wind-strength at base camp to something less than cyclonic!
We stayed one night (Friday) and, as it was so cold, we slept in our clothes, each in his/her own sleeping bag and kept awake by the snuffling of wombats as they ate the bread that we left outside the tent..
(Scanned from 35mm slide; camera Olympus Trip)
On the Saturday afternoon, with no improvement in the weather, we packed up and headed off to Old Adaminaby, arriving at the camping site in near darkness.
I had great trouble getting the tent pegs into the ground and it wasn't until the following morning that we discovered I'd been trying to pound them into the solid sandstone base of what had been an old building site.
At least we were able to have hot showers and warm ourselves but this night we slept in the car seeing that the tent looked like a partially collapsed hot air balloon.
Sunday morning we headed back to Sydney, suffering from a flat tyre en-route, which we had fixed at Queanbeyan.
And so ended our weekend of rampant passion.
We still laugh about it every Easter.
Years ago, before Janet & I were married we had very little cash and none for motels so we went camping. We put up our little 2-man tent in various places from Eastern New Brunswick to Northern Vermont. There was one thing that each trip had in common. No matter how bright and sunny the day was, it would rain and rain hard during the night. Your story brought back cold and damp memories of those days.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, Tom. I suppose that cold, windy and wet conditions are the same everywhere. :)
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