As I laid in the tent listening to the midnight thunderstorm rumbling ever closer, I wondered if my luck was about to run out.
A month earlier I’d been contemplating where my next camping trip would be. After a few solo runs I thought I’d invite some friends along as well, and we eventually settled on a date and location at Woody Head in mid October.
Woody Head is a partially accurate descriptor. It’s three hours drive south of Brisbane, halfway between Grafton and Ballina. It sits on a rocky headland in between beaches with rainforest on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, and has plenty of amenities and even a little shop if you’re so inclined. I picked it because I went here as a kid, and once as an adult, and it’s one of the only National Parks I know where you can camp directly by the beach. It’s a little slice of paradise for $34.85 a night.
I picked up S and drove the EV down, stopping for lunch and a recharge at Ballina, and with a discombobulating timezone change we arrived around 2pm and set up camp.
After camping with a string of leaky, awkward tents I decided to get something with a vague whiff of quality about it and bought the Coleman Instant Up Darkroom 4 Person Tent. It doesn’t quite thworp and pop out instantly like the foldable tents, but it’s pretty easy to just extend the legs out and pull a fly over the top. The benefit of this tent is I can actually stand fully upright in it, so I can get changed or whatever without having to contort myself into an aching pretzel after a mediocre sleep. It’s slightly larger when packed up and I haven’t worked out where to store it in my apartment yet, but it’s so much more comfortable than anything I’ve tried thus far.
My good friends An & Ax arrived shortly after and unloaded their gear, including a big 3×3 gazebo which was perfect to set up a kitchen underneath. In the usual camp tradition, now I have gear envy want to get one for myself. After we conquered nature through sheer grit, determination, and mass produced mod cons Ax went to (unsuccessfully) start a fire in the adjacent fire pit and I unpacked the milk frother and plugged it into the EV to make hot chocolate for everyone.
By the time we’d had a chance to relax into a communal cheese board the sun had gone down. Probably something to do with the time zone change. We chatted for a while, explored the rocky beach in the dark, and took this album cover in the pitch darkness.
The forecast called for rain, but in the end it was totally fine. Until close to midnight when S spotted lightning on the horizon. We thought maybe it was the flash of a torch but soon after it happened again and this time we all saw it and figured it might be time to fortify the campsite and go to bed.
After unplugging the electronics and putting everything undercover we retired to the tents.
My little blow up mattress was surprisingly comfortable, but with the windows closed to the rain the tent was stifling hot, and my big fluffy sleeping bag was no help. I was exhausted and fell asleep almost instantly, though it didn’t last long because the thunder kept creeping closer and closer.
When it transmuted from low pitch rumbles to high pitch crackling I heard the boozy campsite across from ours start to panic, moving cars and hammering in pegs. Shortly afterwards the wind picked up and big fat drops started to fall on the canvas. The thunder was almost directly overhead when a huge crack freaked everyone out and the rain turned from drops into a deluge which I expected to feel dripping through the tent fabric onto my body at any moment. But it didn’t happen. The trusty Coleman held its own just fine.
I listened to the thunderstorm as it passed over and rolled out to sea, then fell asleep until morning when I woke to the sound nobody wants to hear.
It was a sort of scratch-scratching in the campsite. A wild animal was clearly enjoying something we’d left out the night before.
The toilet block had a sign warning campers to protect food from goannas, and there was no way I was going to mess with one of those danger units before breakfast. So I kind of just imagined how good it would be if the goanna would just go away of its own volition as I avoided the problem and slipped back to sleep.
Thankfully it wasn’t a goanna. Instead it turned out to be a bush turkey that got into the flimsy garbage bag and spread detritus all over the camp which An had the misfortune of being first to discover, and thus clean up. Turns out the native animals are all clued into where the food is, so we learned quickly never to leave a garbage bag unattended.
That morning for breakfast I just had a hot chocolate and disappeared to the shoreline for some alone time and glute stretches to undo the rigours of sleeping on the ground.
C, unable to get time off work, rolled into camp at about ten o’clock. The sign says you can only set up from 2pm but there was nobody there so we set up the tent anyway. Ask forgiveness not persimmons, etc.
After that we cleared the campsite of anything the turkeys might like to rummage through and piled into Ax’s Jeep and drove ten minutes into the small beachside town of Iluka for ice creams and adventure on the high seas.
The ferry runs from Iluka to Yamba five times a day and costs $11.30 each way. It’s a small catamaran painted blue and white, and a surprising number of people were waiting at the top of the gangway holding take away coffees from the cafe next door. The overly charismatic deckhand invited everyone onboard and we staked an outdoor seat at the rear so we could watch the trip up close.
The diesel engines grumbled to life and we started our circuitous 30 minute journey down the river, around several islands, and in to Yamba.
The serenity was a vibe. The sky was intensely blue with puffs of cumulus suspended lazily in the salt haze, and the water shifted through every colour from blue to green. Shortly after we left S saw a dolphin, which the deckhand jokingly claimed would cost $15. I got the impression he’d used that one many times before.
“You’re lucky, it’s $100 if you see a whale!”
After forty-five minutes we docked at Yamba and started out on our adventure. We didn’t get far before we decided to stop at the bowlo for lunch.
The lunch was good value, but the bowling club was a tacky monument to gambling and had no charisma whatsoever. So after finishing lunch we stopped at the Wobbly Chook Brewing Co for coffee. The Chook in contrast was an open air bar in a cute country town high street nestled among cafes, bike shops, and other tourist oriented businesses. Although the fudge place was closed for the day to everyone’s disappointment.
I wanted to hike up to the lighthouse to check out the view, and I’d convinced everyone else to come along despite the high UV index. But after seeing the disorientingly steep street up and getting lost trying to take a detour, we decided to stay at sea level and walk around the foot of the cliffs to explore the beaches and rock formations.
After getting more than enough sun, we headed back in time for the last ferry of the day.
“It’s a $160 dollar taxi ride if you miss it” informed the deckhand, before rattling off the taxi prices from all the nearby towns to Iluka.
When we arrived back at the camp there was a mess of all over the table and a bush turkey in the distance gorging itself on a plastic bag of powdered milk. I made an inappropriate gendered slur and chased it away, and picked up the mutilated bag of yellow dust between thumb and forefinger with a look of sheer disgust before plopping it into a fresh bin bag.
Thankfully we picked up actual milk while we were in town, but I couldn’t believe a turkey was even interested. Can they digest lactose? Or would it puff up and start to lactate forming an entirely new branch of the evolutionary tree?
My sense of indignance was short lived because in an earlier act of self-sabotage I offered to make chilli for the group that night. The electric cooktop can plug straight into the car, and I have a vegetarian recipe with (almost) entirely shelf stable ingredients so I didn’t need to keep things in the cooler. It’s not a complicated recipe, but it takes about two hours so I had to make a start by soaking the TVP.
After dousing the TVP in water and securing it firmly lest any turkeys try their chances, we headed to the beach for a swim.
The tide was out so the beach we thought would be there was mostly rocks. But we found a nice spot around the corner which was perfect. It wasn’t freezing, but it was sufficiently cold that I took a good 15 minutes before I felt confident putting each subsequent body part under the water.
We stayed until the sun started to set, the headed back to shower and finish cooking. In the end the chilli was excellent. I made little chilli quesadillas paired with cheese and sour cream, and a handful of corn chips on the side. Despite an impromptu cheese board forming beforehand and nobody claiming to be particularly hungry we didn’t leave any chilli left over. This made me very happy indeed.
That night we all tried our hand at getting the fire alight before former girl scout An finally got it going with a little assistance from the firelighters we bought from IGA earlier. Then we all sat around, exhausted but satisfied to the core.
The next day we packed up early, made breakfast on one of the barbecues by the shore, and headed into Iluka for coffee before parting ways and starting the 3.5 hour journey home.
My retrospective thoughts are:
- Originally I wanted to bikepack, so my camping decisions were based around small size and weight. But I think I’ve realised I prefer comfort. This was a comfortable trip.
- To that end I really want a gazebo of my own. It’s such a practical piece of camping equipment, and it’s so fast to put up. Tentworld sells white ones which presumably reflect heat better.
- Next time I’ll take a crate or box to put gear in. The camp table was barely visible under the miscellaneous crap that we brought. And it’s not a particularly grippy surface so things kept sliding off. Having a place to put em all would help a lot.
- Don’t forget to bring kindling. And firelighters. But I don’t think I care to cook on a fire when the cooktop used less than 2% of the EV battery for a couple of hours usage. Especially considering how much easier it is. I think it’s safe to say it’s fine to use for a weekend away with no problems.
- After filling out and submitting the lengthy and repetitive Microsoft Word drone permission slip, NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service sent me a wildly patronising refusal to fly in the national park, so next time I won’t even botherrrrrr.
Overall it was a great trip and I’d do it again.
There’s something about the ocean, the actual ocean, that puts you at ease. Waking up to the sounds of rainforest birds (turkeys excepted) is a pretty good way to do it. And at a time when living just costs more, you can’t beat camping with good friends. I feel very lucky.
