When did my love for this start?

On camping alone as a single woman.

Perched up at the local general store of a small country town I’m passing through on my way home. I’ve got a beef pie, smothered in sauce and a shitty long black coffee that a girl under 17 made because no one can afford to pay time and a half on Sundays to anyone but juniors anymore. But I don’t care that it’s shitty, I only learnt that from being ‘spoilt’ by Melbournes ‘elite’ coffee standards anyway. It’s funny how, on my journey back home after 48 hours of solo camping in Victoria’s brutal winter, I can smash a meat pie drowned in sauce, guilt-free. Maybe because I’m not in the city where everything tells you to be skinny and deep social conditioning would see me reach for some sort of healthy salad wrap over the meat pie I actually wanted. Maybe it’s because when I’m out here, alone, long enough to trace my mental steps back to the subconscious, I can make sense of what’s real and what’s not. Wait, let me rephrase that because everything’s real. I get to spend enough time sorting through the narratives that exist within, to decipher the ones I want to subscribe to and the ones I need to cancel the subscription for.

Anyway, I’m here, at the general store, and the winter sun is making out with my face. My nose is runny, and I keep sniffling it, the way one might get frustrated at if they were my partner and passive aggressively pass me a napkin as a means to shut me the fuck up. The stench of my unwashed, primal body rising up from underneath my thermal top that’s underneath my hoodie, thats underneath my puffer jacket. I’ve got two pairs of pants on and the same undies I’ve worn since Friday. It’s Sunday. There’s silver duct tape patched onto the arm of my puffer because I ripped it last night by accident on the protruding plastic from the back light of my Ute. An issue I never fixed created another issue I now need to address. Tape will suffice for now, even if it’s silver and the fabric is black. When it happened, I automatically felt excitement rush up to the surface ‘eeep! New puffer jacket shopping coming up’ abruptly interrupted by ‘shut up, mend it and keep going. You don’t need a new anything’.

These internal conversations happen because I’ve taught myself how to sit in silence long enough to notice what goes on up there. That’s why I can catch it now. The city doesn’t really leave room for that. I probably would’ve gotten a targeted ad within 30 minutes for puffer jackets on sale, and I would’ve immediately bought one because omg it’s on sale, girl math means I’m making money. Literally wtf. I could go so deep on the whole girl math trend, but I won’t because I’m not here to harbour more hate, I’m here to express.

My thermal leggings sit under my Sabi pants, made from waterproof, dead-stock nylon fabric; they’re perfect. This was the first time I truly tested them, not just to look cute on a morning trot to get a coffee in the big bad city; but the reality of what durability means to me. Something that can get thrashed during one of my spontaneous camping missions: mud, dust, and campfire smoke. Bending down, standing up, over and over again. Being cold, being warm, feeling comfortable. How well something fares during the challenges of being out bush is my only barometer from now on. Oh, and how easy completing laborious tasks feels in them. The fact that I haven’t taken them off says enough. If they weren’t working in any capacity they’d be off, because that’s what I love about camping and being out bush, if it’s not functional, comfortable or efficient, it can fuck off.

There’s a heaviness in my chest where a smoky campfire is still burning. I’m not sure if the heaviness is from already missing it or from all the smoke I unintentionally inhaled whilst cooking every meal I ate over an open fire. Either way, I don’t care because you can’t beat fresh, cold, crisp country air, the air I’ve been breathing all day, every day since I set up camp. You truly don’t get that in the city.

I tried tracing back my love for camping, for ‘roughing’ it, for being challenged in every way. And still it baffles me to think, a girl, so afraid of the dark is now a woman who faces every fear head on. I get scared every single time I camp. But I have 1 of 2 choices in every moment of fear, 1. Let it win, pack up camp and head home or 2. Let it sit with me at the campfire, have a chat with it until I figure out it’s not camping with me, only passing by for some heat at the fire. I get scared about a lot. Sometimes I wonder if the man who saw me driving down this dirt road, who I waved a compulsory few fingers up at - because 2 Ute drivers on a single dirt road command that type of acknowledgment - will remember and come find me at night and do horrible things.

I get scared that my swag will be filled with huntsman spiders again, after that time I was rolling it up at the end of a camping weekend to see 8 huntsman’s crawl out. Yep. I slept with a bunch of fucking large spiders and I genuinely wanted to vomit when I saw them run from my camp bedroom. I get scared that some wild animal will find my swag at night and trample over it or rip its claws through the canvas and eat me and my tasty sidekick, Beau. I get scared by every single horror movie I’ve ever seen, thinking it will be reenacted in real time and I’ll be dead before sunrise. Yes. This all exists in my fear brain. But every single time I go camping I wake up alive. That. That is enough reason to tell my fears I’m actually okay and that I’m actually safe because until I don’t wake up, I’ll keep on camping. That’s just the way fear works; it wants you to go back to the thing it knows: comfort. Comfort would be packing up camp, retreating back to my city apartment, where convenience shines and being truly challenged and uncomfortable is relegated to those who experience homelessness.

Sometimes I wonder if, like… camping, is just a privileged person trying to feel something? People experience the wrath of sleeping out in the cold every night, without half or even a sliver of the resources I get to take camping. Here I am choosing to experience the challenging and inconvenient ways of living, whilst some people don’t have that choice, some people don’t get to take pretty pictures and write whimsical reflections about it for their substack. For some people, it’s reality, it’s everyday. And I sit with those thoughts every time.

I started camping when I was a little girl. Back then, I raced motocross out of a decision made by my dad so we could live out his unmet dreams. But I loved it because it was the only time he really showed care and attention to us. It was the only time he made any effort. And even though that effort was solely tied to his projection of unmet dreams and access to the childhood he wished he had, I took any attention I could get from him. It was a resource that was few and far between for us as kids. He would burn fresh tracks into the bush with his - what then seemed giant - motorbike with thick tread and a noisey exhaust. He would set up cones and have us kick start our motorbikes until they coughed and spluttered on, and we would ride and ride and ride these tracks until our time got faster. I remember one time my dirtbike conked out half way around the track. And so there I was, a little girl, about 7, pushing her heavy motorbike along the track back to camp, crying profusely because I was alone out in the bush and all I could see where thick trees and shrubs, not a camp or family member in sight. I remembered the kangaroos with big claws I’d seen whilst we were driving out there, and all I could think of was ‘they’re going to come and kill me’. I eventually got back to camp but I was traumatised, I hated every minute of being that scared and that uncertain, and unfortunately, my dad didn’t possess the same care and love and understanding my mother did, not many men of that generation do. So, I wasn’t held or validated or at least asked if I was okay. The bigger concern was why the bike conked out halfway around the track.

So now I’m circling back to the same question I find myself riddled with every time I’m out camping ‘When did my love for this start?’. I say this, as an entity, because it is. There are so many things you need to consider when you go camping, alone, in places you’re unfamiliar with or completely unseen or experienced yet. It starts with the mapping out of everything. The physical space/land/location, the tetris packing game, the time you leave and the time camp needs to be set up and the fire on before sundown. Then a food/supplies list. You’ll need to check the weather and be prepared for it all, in case. You need enough firewood to keep warm and to cook with, enough kindling and smaller bits to start the fire. Enough ice to keep your perishables fresh and warm, practical clothing that dries quickly if it gets wet, provides warmth when it drops below 0 and can get dirty beyond all measures. You need footwear that is easy to slide on and off but won’t be bothered if it gets wet, and can stand the heat of a fire when you’re cooking over it. But above all else, you’ve got to be prepared to problem solve; not everything goes your way when you’re relying on nature.

I guess that’s the part I love most, the moments you can’t and don’t account for. Because whilst my set-up affords me a comfortable stay wherever I go, it’s still very much an amateur’s set-up. I have slowly, over time collected the essentials and the rest I just have to figure out. That’s half the fun, and all the joy, for me anyway.

My life is at a point where I’m entering my 30s and I’m yearning to learn more about land and country, to understand the earth’s wisdom and offerings, rather than indulging in and leaning on man-made conveniences all the time. Like, it’s no surprise that now, at 29, my eyes ears and soul fixate on the small things like when I pass through country towns and experience the unbridled sense of community. The countless driveways with hand painted signs selling bags of horse shit at $10 a pop, running on a pure honesty system, where people drop in cash, grab a bag and go - no one policing it. People build little wooden boxes with little doors on little hinges, and fill it with books so that anyone passing by can grab or swap a book to read. Every person you pass on a quiet, sleepy town road will either nod their head, wave a few fingers in the air or better yet, honk. All out of genuine acknowledgement for purely existing on the same road at the same time in their sleepy little country town. The person behind the counter at a petrol station will most likely ask “how are ya?” or “Whaddya want luv?” and will almost always send you on your way with “have a great day luv, n drive safe!”.

I find my face even looks different when I’m out being just a human again. Or maybe my eyes see it differently because I have the lens of a whole other perspective. The wrinkles set in deeper between my brows because I use my eyes to squint whilst the sun sets and I have to build a fire to keep warm. Wrinkles where I once injected poison in an effort not to use the muscles in my face to show the wrinkles that are now there. irony everywhere. My freckles pop a little harder when there’s nothing else to distract you from seeing them. no lipstick or fancy lip liner combo or rouge blush to flush the cheeks out. Just me, exactly as I was born to look at 29 years old.

And when I leave, there’s the dirt of earth set deep into the lines of my palms, tucked away under my nails - small souvenirs of time spent existing as we were always meant to: under stars, around fire, on country.