It won’t rain, I promise

April 6, 2015April 6, 2015 / Christina B / 5 Comments

I’ve heard that before. The last time was when I was about to set off on a 30km bike ride around Rottnest Island a few years ago. I was ready to go, had my water, my camera in my backpack and then I suddenly doubted whether it was such a good idea after all because the weather was looking a bit dodgy so I checked the forecast which said it was going to rain, but I’d been looking forward to it so much because I love doing that ride, the peacefulness of having long stretches of road just to yourself, to go however fast or slow I wanted with no-one else to answer to or complain if I stopped for yet another photo opportunity and the magnificent views all around so I must have looked quite disappointed, all dressed up and nowhere to go and my husband piped up: “It won’t rain, you’ll be fine”. I looked at him very sceptically and doubtfully (the menacing clouds were there for all to see) and he repeated: “It won’t rain, I promise” with such conviction that I decided that I might as well risk it. I had a water resistant (note: not water proof) jacket and my backpack has a water proof cover so I knew that the camera would stay dry so off I went on my little adventure.

For the first 15 minutes or so it didn’t rain but I was watching the clouds becoming darker and darker, threatening to rain and then the heavens opened. Since the forecast wasn’t for persistent rain I thought the shower will be over quickly and I kept going but within a few minutes I was absolutely soaked, and then I decided I may as well finish the ride seeing that I was already drenched and couldn’t really get any wetter than that. At the western tip of the island the rain abated for a bit and I was able to take the camera out and get a few quick photos and then it was back on the bike and keep going because it was cold but all the while in my mind I could hear Ironman saying: “It won’t rain, I promise” and since this wasn’t the first time I got soaked to the skin while out cycling on his weather advice I decided not to listen to his predictions in future. The previous time was during our short visit to Perth in August 2004 and we’d hired two bikes to ride around the Swan river (just a short 10km ride) but the weather was not promising and about 10 minutes into that ride there was such a downpour that we were wet through within seconds. We finished the ride and it was all quite an adventure until we tried to walk back into the hotel unnoticed, through the lobby and to the elevator with shoes making a shloshing sound and leaving a puddle with each step, trying to look like it was entirely normal to walk into posh hotel lobbies with dripping wet clothes and hair and pretending to look a bit more dignified than the complete drowned rats that we were!

So when we planned our camping trip to Mount Trio Bush Camp in the Stirling Ranges and I noticed the weather forecast said that there was a 60% chance of a thunderstorm on the Saturday, I was naturally a bit apprehensive because we were going to sleep in swags. I love sleeping in a swag because you’re in a little cocoon and if it’s dry and not too cold you can unzip the top and sleep with it open under the stars, which is fabulous. We’ve been to this camp before and it’s rustic and quiet if you avoid popular weekends, which makes it all the more peaceful to wake up to the sound of birdsong and a view of the mountain. The thing is I’ve never slept in a swag in the rain and had had my fair share of getting wet while camping (It’s no use all of us getting wet), and since you climb in and out of the swag at the top everything would get wet if you got in and out in the rain, so I was worried about camping in wet weather, but my man reassured me: “It won’t rain on that side of the mountain” (I should have known there was no scientific analysis of detailed rain data in that area from which this was deducted, it was purely a gamble to get me to go, and it took me just one day there to prove the opposite), and when I didn’t look convinced, the trump card came out: “It won’t rain, I promise”. As if that promise of fair weather would weigh more than scientific rain data on that side of the mountain (and the promise of his weather predictions had proven itself wrong in the past) but I decided to risk the rain, which I was sure there was going to be some of.

Bush camping at Mount Trio on our previous (dry) visit with the swags in the foreground

Our swags in the rain

Friday afternoon saw us driving through innumerable and large swarms of insects on our way there which – in hindsight – was the first sign of rain to come but it was a beautiful, wind still evening with not a cloud in sight. A strong wind came up during the evening but it was still clear as, we did some star gazing and a friendly fellow camper helped me take some photos of stars. When we went to bed I hoped that we’d dodged the rain bullet and kept the top flap of the swag unzipped and drifted off to sleep peacefully and the wind even died down overnight until I was woken up by drops of rain falling in my face around 4am. (And no, the mountain hadn’t moved since we went to bed, it just rained on that side of it.) Once I’d zipped it up I was snug and cosy inside the warm swag and I fell asleep once again, this time with the sound of rain softly falling on the swag and everything stayed dry inside so all was well with the world until I got to the campers’ kitchen on Saturday morning to discover that my jolly swagman had forgotten to pack the coffee. The first (and probably last) time I left the packing up to him and he forgot the one thing that could potentially make me lose my sense of humour, so we had a shower and drove to the nearest town (50km away) for a lovely coffee. Morning saved and sense of humour intact.

The rain persisted on and off throughout Saturday (exactly as the forecast predicted) and it was clear that it definitely rained quite a bit on that side of the mountain – which I duly pointed out. Saturday night was very stormy with strong wind gusts and hard rain which kept waking me up but I stayed warm and dry, rugged up underneath the duvet even though the inside of the cover of the swag was completely wet and I fully expected water to start dripping in my face at any given moment, and I thoroughly enjoyed the adventure of it all. I have to admit that the fact that I knew I had an out – I planned to go and sleep in the car should it get wet inside the swag – meant that I was never too worried about the weather, but I knew it was going to be a rainy weekend despite Ironman’s best efforts to convince me otherwise. I’ve forgiven him his promise of no rain, I never believed it from the start anyway.

Sunset at Mount Trio Bush Camp

“It’s no use all of us getting wet” (until a River Runs Through It)

October 13, 2014March 21, 2016 / Christina B / 1 Comment

The setting is Okaukeujo campsite in Etosha National Park, Namibia; the timing is night-time a few years ago in 2011 during a strong La Niña season with above-average rainfall even well into autumn in that summer-rainfall area; the scene is two four-wheel drive vehicles with two rooftop tents each and our family fast asleep in two of those tents until Child No 2, who shared a tent with me, woke me up and said: “There’s water dripping in my face!” and indeed there was water dripping into our tent, and not just a little bit of water either, it was a steady little stream. It quickly started dripping in my face as well and the rain storm wasn’t showing any signs of abating and I realised that something had to be done as the rain wasn’t going to stop coming into our tent by itself.

A bit of background information may be necessary at this point to fully appreciate the scenario. Earlier that afternoon when we drove into the park we drove through a hail storm, which cleared after a while but there were still some threatening clouds about and it was quite clear that the weather had not yet relented and there was some more rain to come. It was just a matter of whether it was going to come our way and if it did, how much of it we’d have to endure. The campsite was so wet (with puddles of water everywhere as the water doesn’t recede quickly in that limy soil) that the park management was struggling to find suitable spots for campers as some sites were uninhabitable and in fact the entire park measuring just over 20 000km² had puddles of water all through it, some roads were impassable and the actual 130km long and up to 50km wide Etosha pan looked like an ocean with only water visible as far as the eye could see. I’ve never before or since seen the pan filled with water like that year.

The hail storm we drove through before entering the park

Etosha pan at our visit in April 2011

Etosha pan at our next visit

That evening after dinner we were sitting around the campfire with our friends all feeling slightly apprehensive over the weather when the wind picked up and the cover of our (mine and Child No 2’s) tent was flapping quite wildly in the breeze so I asked my husband why that was since he and Child No 1 had put up our tents for the night and none of the other tent covers were flapping and they all seemed secure but he just dismissed it and said that it was fine so I trusted him and left it at that. Not long after it started raining though and we all ran for cover thinking the rain would soon pass but when it didn’t we decided we might as well call it a day and went to bed. Next thing, Child No 2 woke me up when the water was dripping in her face and my immediate reaction was to call my dear husband to come and help because there was clearly something wrong with our tent cover (after he’d assured me that it was fine) and in reply he sent Child No 1 to help me; I got out the tent, climbed down the ladder in the pouring rain and went around to the side of the vehicle where the water was running into our tent but since it was dark and there was a deluge of rain and I had no idea how the tent covers were supposed to be secured I wasn’t able to fix it. Child No 1 stood next to me half asleep and looking at the tent in dismay with no idea what to do either. By the time we were both wet through like drowned rats and my calls for my husband’s help were becoming more and more urgent his reply came back from the depths of their (dry) tent: “It’s no use all of us getting wet.” Oh my.

I exploded to such an extent that I probably added a fair amount of electricity to the stormy weather which didn’t seem to move him either but he finally decided that it would be in everyone’s best interest (including his own wellbeing) to come and sort out the problem. It didn’t take him long (and I think it would have taken even less time had he done it earlier in the evening before it started raining) and we could all get back to bed albeit in a wet tent for some of us. Thankfully that was the last rain we had whilst camping on that trip and the sun did come out nicely the next morning so we could get all our bedding dry but for a while the air around me was like a minefield that couldn’t be defused, especially not by the teasing banter which only seemed to charge the air even more!

The clouds that dropped so much water on us later in the evening

Funnily enough our very first camping trip together many years ago we also had to deal with a cloudburst after I’d said to my husband many a time that I didn’t want to camp in the rain with the tent we had at the time (it had two sleeping compartments on either side of a communal area that had no groundsheet and you couldn’t stand up straight anywhere in the tent, so there was nowhere to keep anything dry except in your bed). We’d driven all day watching dark ominous clouds, reached Upington where we were camping for the night, put up the tent, I went for a shower and it was at that point that the heavens opened. Everyone in the ablution block was trapped there for about half an hour because the rain was torrential. When it finally let up a bit and I made it back to our tent there was literally a river running through it. My husband thought it all quite funny because he hadn’t realised that there was water in the middle of the tent – it was dark and in our early camping days we hadn’t yet invested in the luxury that is camping lights – until Child No 1 (a little boy of two at the time) started kicking at something on the ground which turned out to be an attempt to stop the river! In some strange way my sense of humour failure only added to my husband’s amusement.

We’ve had a few other camping mishaps over the years such as forgetting to pack the tent pegs, but one that I’ll remember for a long time was the first time we went camping with our current tent. Note to all campers: never put your tent up for the first time after dark on a camping trip, always do it at home or at the very least in daylight hours for the first time. I realised very quickly that my input was best kept to myself and proceeded by just following instructions, but it still took us a few hours with Ironman in desperation resorting to reading the instructions by the light of a torch and one of the tent poles falling on my head twice at which point I was feeling decidedly sorry for myself but we managed in the end. At least it didn’t rain so there was no question about who was going to get wet and neither was there a river running through it. Thank goodness for small mercies.