Camping at Coolendel

"I love this place called Coolendel, my haven from the norm, it's here I come to recharge my soul, just to relax and not conform." - words by a lesser known Australian poet and I'm not sure about the conforming bit but it is where we have just spent the Australia Day long weekend along with 6 other families - 14 adults and 15 kids at last count! We were there this time last year and had such a fantastic time that we had to repeat the experience. It's a private campsite about 3.5 hours south of Sydney and the last half hour is along a dirt track. It's called a wild life refuge and is teeming with peacocks, wallabies, goannas and wombats (reportedly the largest in NSW) although the biggest draw card for us is the river and the rapids which have some great rocks for jumping.

7 families is close to a military operation and we started our planning with dinner at Emma's last Monday night - I brought my laptop so that I could take notes and circulate them to the wider group. It was agreed that we would all eat together and each be responsible for buying one type of food eg bread, dairy, meat etc. The day following our planning session I went into my local bakers and ordered 165 bread rolls - transporting that many carbohydrates is a mission in itself!

We arrived at about midday on Friday - Emma and I took the four kids down early - and we put up our tents in about 35 degrees heat - I was puce coloured by the end but a swim in the river and a few beers restored me in time for an evening around the campfire - not needed given the temperatures but atmospheric.

Our days quickly took on the rhythm of breakfast, swim, lunch, swim, relaxing at the camp, swim, dinner, wombat and wallaby spotting, stories around the campfire, bed. It was incredibly relaxing and having that many kids makes life much easier as they can fall out and there is always someone else to play with.

Tom was completely in his element camping and swimming. At the river there are some fantastic rocks for jumping off and Tom first started with one which was about 3 foot high - he jumped off it several times before Tess plucked up the courage. However, it didn't take long for him to realise that there was a higher rock which looked like fun - the 7 and 8 year olds in our group were constantly jumping off it - it was about 7ft above the water level and it was high enough to relocate my stomach to my mouth when I jumped off. Jules took Tom up for a look and as the rock was quite jagged Jules was worried that Tom wouldn't be able to jump wide enough so he threw him off - Tom was incredibly indignant because he wanted to "do it by my own" and he went back for more! After so much excitement he came back to camp, sat down in a chair and fell fast asleep.

On Sunday it was Ken's birthday and Burns night so we celebrated with haggis, mash and swede followed by a lamington birthday cake - a nod to all the nationalities!

Jules unfortunately had to leave the weekend on Sunday night because he had his first day sailing on St Jude - a 47ft yacht which did the Sydney-Hobart last year. They did a race down to Botany Bay and back and although they only came mid-field it was a great opportunity for Jules to meet the rest of the crew - I understand there's another off-shore race planned soon.