Anstey Canoe & Gliding Camp

The Anstey Canoe camp was held over the May long weekend at Roonka and was definitely a great camp with a huge range of stuff to do. A pretty small group went including Alex, Brendan, Michael, Marc Daniel and Myself. We decided to go somewhere easy for our first trip canoeing in many years for most of us and to make life even easier we booked a dorm room to ourselves and the smaller kitchen/ dinning area so all we needed was ourselves, our personal gear and food, probably the least amount of stuff we've taken to a camp ever.

We went shopping and got all our stuff together on the Friday night before leaving around 8ish, with both Daniel's and Brendan's cars packed with stuff. It was a very educational trip with an in depth discussion about the KFC secret herbs and spices which resulted in getting the definitions of herbs and spices and deciding that salt is a seasoning not a spice. A very quiet night and probably the most peaceful of the weekend as we weren't next to anyone else.

We managed to be up at a reasonable time to get breakfast and prepare to go canoeing. We spent the morning going upstream and stoped in a side part to the river to practise some techniques before heading further up and down a off shoot of the river which went under an old bridge and ended up at a lake.

The weather in the afternoon looked a bit doubtful, which, coupled with exhaustion from the mornings trip, meant a very reluctant walk back to the canoes for another lot of paddling. Again we found an inlet and followed it round to a dead end back near Roonka. We ended the day with a candle lit diner outside with lasagne and pudding for tea and bad shirts all round, followed by a game of compatibility.

Since semaphore scout group had arrived during Saturday, Sunday morning we were blessed with the sounds of a bazillion little kids running around and around and waking stuff and playing with the fire unattended… we left mid morning to go gliding but had to wait for the other kids to go first before us. Gliding was fantastic but unfortunately Alex threw up when she went up, but did get to take it home with her. Even more unfortunate was the fact that Michael had to go after Alex with a microphone which smelt like spew. Since each flight was 20 min there was plenty of waiting so we took cards and so forth and after my flight Daniel even took me for a Driving lesson out in the middle of nowhere which went well.

We held a scouts own type activity before going down to the billabong for a Crew Vigil. One by one everyone was taken and invested as a Rover Knight down by the river with a ceremony which took all weekend to put together. After the ceremony we all changed and rugged up and headed back to Armstrong with Daniels telescope for a bit of astronomy, with some port to keep warm. We did get to see a few things but the cloud covered most of the sky eventually so we left and hit a kangaroo on the way back (hilux 1: kangaroo 0).
Photos can be found Here