Tons of tomatoes and lashings of ginger beer

We haven't been camping for ages, our lives have been too busy with other things and so we thought we'd grab an opportunity to go for an overnight camp in our local area which just happens to be the world heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park . We were inspired by friends Sarah and Dean who take themselves and their kids to a local spot close to home, enjoy an overnight camp and then return to their super busy lives.

We planned the escape with Kathleen and Susan. Just like the famous five we made sure we had tons of tomatoes, lashings of ginger beer and Cook's best fruit cake, I think we could have fed the entire camp ground with the provisions we took for just one night!

We went to Murphys Glen just up the hill from where we live, about a 30 minute drive. It felt a bit like having a sleep over in a friends back yard but way more beautiful of course as we are surrounded by some of the most lovely bush in NSW (Australia even). We anticipated a fairly quite camp site, probably no one there except us and the wild life, that was not to be.

Unfortunately for us, and a scout troupe from Leichhardt, who were excellent neighbours, there was a large group of the 'huntin', shootin' and fishin' campers well established by the time we arrived who had trail bikes and chain saws and used them all bloody afternoon and early evening, so the blissful peace in the bush we were anticipating was not experienced until night fall sadly - very, very annoying. They broke all the rules, had a huge fire in a total fire ban, used chain saws to cut their wood and got totally pissed in the evening. We felt a tad intimidated by them I must admit so were cowardly and stayed out of their ambit. All in all there must have been around 50 or more people in the camp ground, goodness knows what its like in the school holidays! People were still arriving after night fall, we supposed it was people heading off on longer trips and this was their first bush camp after escaping from Sydney.

Our short camping trip was really pleasurable though despite the yobs, Susan and Kathleen cooked a superb dinner and then we sat around the trangia in lieu of a fire while Kathleen strummed her uke and we sang along as the star strewn sky wheeled above us between the tree canopy. I succumbed to tiredness but these three hardy ones managed a few hands of euchre before calling it a night. Noisy and bolshy cockatoos woke us in the morning, rather than chain saws or trail bikes thankfully, we think our noisy lot were too hung over to do much more than pack up and leave as we did after a stroll along Bedford Creek.