Posted on 01/08/2012 1:01:25 PM PST by SJackson
I have just returned from a trip where I lay for hours prone on a thin strip of air with only polystyrene separating my strained back from the ground below. The rain belted down all night and its thud upon the tent sounded like a stream of thunder. I pondered whether nature was overrated while several kookaburras shrieked in unison and dragged me in a kind of aural violence from my first period of restful sleep at 5am.
Welcome to the joys of camping.
According to Monash University academic Bill Garner, camping is essential to the Australian experience. From Sydney Cove to the goldfields, the overland telegraph to the Snowy Mountains scheme, camping has been instrumental to almost every phase of our historical development, he says.
Advertisement: Story continues below It was supposed to be one of those dowdy pastimes that became perversely fashionable for a moment, only to become just as unfashionable again once everybody tried it and found out what it actually entailed.
Yet, according to industry insiders, camping is experiencing a boom, partly due to the lacklustre economy and an aversion to extravagance and environmental unfriendliness.
''Glamping''
sleeping in a luxuriously appointed tent someone else has put up for you - is increasingly seen as an acceptable, if not preferable, alternative to a bed-and-breakfast booking.
In our high-tech world, a striving towards gadget-free simplicity and proximity to nature acquires a greater dimension. This may be more apparent in Australia, where our national identity is partly tied to the rugged environment.
But while it has shifted from practical necessity to leisure activity in the past 50 years, there are large sections of Australia that would never consider camping as an idyllic way to spend their holidays - particularly those from ethnic communities.
As I surveyed my surroundings in a coastal caravan park, I was struck that I was the only non-white person among hundreds of gleeful holidaymakers. For many people from ethnic backgrounds, particularly Asian or Mediterranean, the connection between simple living and poverty is just too strong.
Any attempt to brag about my view of green pastures and scenic lakes to my parents is met by comparisons with their own rise from Bangladeshi villages.
In his popular blog "Stuff White People Like", Charles Lander writes: "Once in the camp area, white people will walk around for a while, set up a tent, have a horrible night of sleep, walk around some more. Then they get in the car and go home."
While his blog is often a satire of the bourgeois middle class - our equivalent of the chardonnay socialist - camping arguably unites the white working class and the white middle class in one of their few shared activities, even if they are unlikely to be sharing the same tent.
The late Oxford-based political philosopher G. A. Cohen even used camping as an analogy for why socialism is still the ideal way to organise society.
He described an imaginary camping trip made by several different families, and argued that the trip proceeded according to two principles - "an egalitarian principle" and "a principle of community" - that together captured the socialist vision of a just society.
Nonetheless, after lying awake listening to the nocturnal sounds of nature, I became grateful for our capitalist ability to generate wealth and modern goods and services, including mass production of pharmaceuticals, when I prescribed myself sleeping tablets the following morning.
The prospect of camping becoming a unifying, cultural experience for all Australians remains a possibility, with latter generations of immigrants far more likely to consider it a viable leisure activity.
In fact, in an age where we lack outlets for transcendence, camping has the potential to become the new Buddhism. It encourages us to loosen our attachment to worldly goods, except for expensive outdoor equipment usually transported to a site in a four-wheel-drive. It encourages extended contemplation free from the constant distractions of hectic, modern life.
And finally, it allows for the priceless luxury of simplicity and enjoyment of pure family time, well worth the complexity of preparation required. As Bill Garner put it in an attempt to sell the virtues of this unique leisure activity, "You do just spend a lot of time sitting."
Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatrist and Herald columnist.
Hear hear!
SSSSHHHHH! What is the matter with you???? ;-))
I've never been to OZ but from what I've seen on TV, there are just too many bugs and snakes and other lethal creatures out there for me, and I've spent a whole lot of years in the tropics.
What a whiner! Camping is fun! Take the right gear and food and you will not be cold, hungry, bored or cranky. We used to cook some great meals on an open fire, including steaks and shrimp. You won’t melt in the rain unless you’re the witch in a fairy tale. It’s only water, as I said ‘what a whiner!’. I love camping and wish we did it more now that the kids are grown.
No better way for a father and son to bond together than going camping.
After getting married 4 years ago, camping ended. My wife’s idea of roughing it is Holiday Inn.
I think that’s great. I’m a couple years short of you and still backpack, but my wife leaves that alone. Trailers and vans are fine. With the crazy luggage restrictions, I’d love to see a conversation about flying and camping/backpacking
Very few Africans and Central Americans live in Australia. Probably less than 0.5% of the population. The largest nonwhite ethnic minorities are aboriginal Australians, Vietnamese and Indians.
Camping is good for everybody. The key is having too many hungry kids at the site. Hungry kids in packs will do anything: collect every splinter of kindling and burnable wood and leaves, neaten up the whole campsite using branches as brooms, collect rocks to encircle the fire, everything in their power and imagination for those s’mores.
And no pooftahs!
He's Australian. I'm guessing fewer blacks and hispanics, and I don't know how the describe the native population.
Help me weld more spikes on the dune buggy.
Unless you try to do it with women, children, or pets; saddle stock that you haven't lived with for at least 5 years and can't control, anybody else that hasn't camped for at least a week in all kinds of weather and you are in an area where you might be able to see or hear another human and that is less than 1/2 day hard drive from the nearest lightbulb.
I think campgrounds are fine. I like the desert too, only time I’ve been to Vegas was cause they have an airport. Any what you mention, wildflowers, plateus, et all are great. As a midwest person, I’ll tolerate the mosquetos, mostly, rather than the snakes. And the hot springs scare me. Not cause of who has been in there, but who climbs in my ear. But isn’t that what camping, presuming that’s not what one does for a living, is about. Different experiences.
Max Max is a movie script that resembles nothing we've seen in history. Even Somalia is nothing like Mad Max.
Done backcountry, done old Holiday Inns. I prefer the former. Unless you're in the backcountry, you can bring a bar with you. Locks, no.
Used to worry about such things, but the desert is huuuuge, and people tend to cluster in very specific areas. The trick is to prevent the enviroweenies from regulating or shutting down the popular areas, as all that does is displace the weekend warriors out to the more remote areas starting the cycle again
Once they reached Boy Scout age, we did hiking/camping, mostly on segments of the AT.
My daughter liked it so well, she was an outdoor adventure instructor for her high school and for her college. My son joined the U.S. Marines, so it apparently didn't bother him either.
Since we've gotten heavily into dog trials, now we mostly are in a camper or staying in a motel nearby the trial site. But that's because we have 3 lively lady Labs to look after.
The Labs are first-class hikers - I put the Ecollars on them but that's just for insurance. My old mare was too much of a fussbudget and too tall to camp with (16.2 TB) but she loved foxhunting.
my wife thinks that camping is a hotel with no room service
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