Camping it up – but not in a gay way

Paul Purcell

My German skinhead friend Pavel loves to camp. When Pavel camps he doesn’t do it in the gay sense of being funny or ironic but in the other sense of the word -” to wear hiking boots, build fires and get in touch with nature.

So when Pavel suggested a few of us go camping, I knew it was not going to be like a big night
out on the scene.

For our first camping trip together I’d found a camping ground called Bents Basin. Apart from the camp name it was a perfect place for four gay men to go because it had what I consider to be the absolute bare minimum of civilised essentials such as flush toilets and even hot showers.

Naturally there had to be an outlet for the hairdryer as well.

My significant others’ responses to someone as finicky as me going bush varied from surprised to hilarious. My partner Kevin was astonished and said, But you only do four-star hotels!

My ex-neighbour Steve thought it was hysterical and christened us the Bents Basin Bandits.

My opera buddy Mike facetiously suggested we take flares, an antivenin kit and DJs’ hampers.

I intended to prove to these disbelievers that I could camp with the best of them.

On the day after a very long and very sweaty dance party, the Bents Basin Bandits -” Pavel, Grant, Marc and me -” set off with only Pavel really knowing how to camp. One and a half hours later, and with the help of a Navman, we arrived at Bents Basin.

My masseur, hot Rod, had warned me about the kinds of people we could expect to run into at a camping ground. And he was right.

Driving around the camp ground we spotted the classic bogan in footy shorts, thongs and blue singlet. It appeared that we were the only gays in this bogan village. Undeterred, we found a quiet spot far from the flannelette shirts and set up camp.

Over the next two days we quickly settled into camp life. We built a fire, cooked marshmallows and sang classic ’70s disco songs under the stars.

Our camping expedition wouldn’t have been complete without a bushwalk and that was when our fun little weekend getaway almost turned to tragedy.

We were scaling some large rocks 10 feet above a river. Marc was teaching Pavel the words to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive when his glasses slipped from his hands. He grabbed them but lost his footing and began to fall.

Not realising what I was doing, my arms flashed out in front of me, grabbing Marc under the arms and hauling him to safety.

Heading back to civilisation I could tell the armchair cynics that not only had I survived bogans, fires, floods and other natural catastrophes but I’d even saved a life. The only thing I hadn’t been able to do was blow dry my hair.

The one saving grace was that I could now recite all the words to I Will Survive. Well, at least I had learned something on my camping weekend.