The weekend was to “celebrate” one of our brood, whom we shall call “Finucan” – making a journey into married life in the coming months.
It was to be a long weekend – Friday through Monday. I couldn’t get there Friday arv, but several of the boys that did, gave it a solid nudge in Noosa that night, sampling a murder of local brews.
Apparently one of our tribe also made himself affectionately known to a couple of the local elders, who, given their age, may well have been traditional landowners. An Olympian effort.
I met the rest of the boys further south at the Etamogarah pub early on the Saturday morning where a game of paintball “skirmish” had been organised to get the trip underway.
The first thing I noticed on the walk into the skirmish gates, was that the standard of conversation had slipped very quickly. Rapid deterioration in conversation quality is a naturally occurring phenomenon on these kinds of “sabbaticals”, but I must confess to a degree of surprise at how rough it was, so early, having not yet pitched a tent.
Needless to say, the chat stayed at a pretty base level the whole trip…
I had never played skirmish before, but had more fun getting dressed up in army greens and running into the scrub to shoot paint bullets travelling at 300 feet / sec - than I thought I would.
It’s pretty damn amusing and you do get your warface on. Of course, we all got a decent caning and there was plenty of hail damage in the form of blue / yellow bruises and hickey like broken capillaries sprayed across our bodies at the end of it.
One of the guys looked like he had the worst ringworm infestation of all time…
After skirmish, we returned to Noosa where Finucan was asked to get dressed in his weekend attire – pink boots, purple top hat and lycra leotard.
After a princely lunch on buckets of KFC and tubes of coke, we loaded up the convoy, 6 fourbies in total, took the barge across the Noosa River and drove up the Northshore for about 15 clicks.
There’s a great feeling of freedom cruising up the beach in the car - it’s great fun. It’d been a few years since I’d last been over to the Northshore and I had forgotten what a great, rugged expanse of beach it is.
Camp was established with a minimum of fuss though three of our cars (including mine) initially missed the spot and went half a dozen k’s further up the beach than required. Nonetheless, a relaxing way to cruise through a Saturday afternoon.
One of the highlights of the Saturday night, apart from the company and the conversation of course, was the fire. In addition to the four heaving great bags of firewood we purchased earlier in the night, we managed to torch a pretty substantial amount of Northshore deadwood. The result was an awesome fire - one of the best I have ever been a part of…
Honourable mention must also be made of one of our greenthumb mates, who monitored and built the fire with sterling expertise.
Given the size and volume of some of the flora (dead of course - mostly...) being harvested from the dunes on a regular basis throughout the night, fears of soil erosion and sandslide were legitimate. However these were warmly soothed by the toasting blaze we had erupting in front of us.
One of the things that did become obvious that night was the discrepancy in musical tastes that has grown more defined as the years have rolled forward. So intolerant were we of each others choices in music, I conspired a drinking game where people had to guess songs and sing them. When this ran out of legs, we settled for passing the ipod on after every song for someone else’s selection...
I have always felt that camp fires are for sing-alongs so the ol' Don McLean classic “American Pie”, was my first choice. Never fails to bring a chorus of bad voices.
I'd left the pump for my air mattress at home, so subsequently spent a good hour at least, fireside, breathing hard into the bugger to get it sleepworthy. Blowing up the mattress had "taken the wind out of me", so I thought I would briefly test it - fireside.
With a few ales in my gullet slowly dissolving the fillet steak sandwich (cuisine for the weekend was exclusively carnivorous, with the exception of the “eggs” on the B & E rolls), an air of contentment overcame me and I drifted away.
The tranquility was not to last.
Ignoring the fact that many of our other crew had also “retired”, one of my intoxicated scumbag mates thought it a nice idea to start ripping my leg hairs out to stir me awake… It took several ripped “clumps”, before I realised what was happening. Awaking from a very pleasurable nap, to find someone going to town on the follicles on your calves with thumb and index finger is not a recipe for a pleasant reaction. I was not a happy camper.
“Steaming” is the right word in this case. And “steaming” is what we both almost were, as we briefly wrestled to within an inch of the inferno…
Following that little incident, I was wide awake again and ended up talking drivel into the wee hours with one of my old pals of South African lineage who has demonstrated legendarily consistent staying power at these kinds of gatherings over the years…
On the Sunday we got in the cars and went further up the beach to cut across inland to Double Island Point. This is truly a beautiful spot.
With the “coloured sands” running down towards Rainbow Beach, the scene resembles a giant orange cake crumbling into the ocean. Stretching up the other way, coffee rocks line the shoreline up to the headland.
Most of the guys swam out to Double Island to play touch footy, while five of us hopscotched along the rocky beach in one of the guy’s Landcruisers up toward the headland and did a little trek / rockclimb around its front. A highlight.
The break off this point is also pretty impressive. A longboarder nabbed a cushy 300 m ride while we were there.
About half of us, including yours truly, regrettably, had to return on the Sunday arv… (If only to cover the sizeable financial hit we all took to purchase the remainder of the 2009 inventory at the Diageo liquor company). By all reports, the survivors chalked up more good times on the Monday.
In sum, a great time had, more memories made, and Finucan’s march towards married life has been toasted appropriately.
I guess one of the standout things is that all seventeen of us on this trip were in the same senior year, at the same high school together. I think that’s pretty exceptional. It will be ten years since we finished next year and I think we all realise, and appreciate, how rare it is to have the bond that we do. We are all really quite different too, which makes it all the better.
Get togethers such as this happen with less frequency as the years burn through, but great friendships need little stoking anyway.
Epic Corno!
ReplyDeleteCheers Snapey!
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