-art by Eyelash Nerd Nosh

-By "Eric M."

As most of you may know, Year 9 was recently- well, fairly recently- given the offer of participating in Duke of Edinburgh Award. Known to most of the students as ‘that camp thing’, the offer of getting several days off school to go camping with a group of friends was irresistible, and a few weeks later a busload of naive students were sent away to a training day.


Now, a few tips for future reference. Firstly, when going on a long bus ride, get on the bus early. It doesn’t matter if you have to kick little old ladies out of the way to do so, just get on that bus before everyone else. Secondly, if you forget the first rule, get onto the bus last, and are forced to sit up the back with all the ‘backseat bandits', bring headphones. But why headphones, I hear you ask. Why not a more useful item such as water, or a shotgun? The answer is this-

‘I said boom-chic-boom!’

‘I SAID BOOM-CHIC-BOOM!’

‘I said boom-chic-boom!’

‘I said boom-chic-a-rakka-rakka-rakka-chic-boom!’

‘I SAID BOOM-CHIC-A-RAKKA-RAKKA-RAKKA-CHIC-BOOM!’

And so on for about fifteen years, give or take a month. With yours truly sitting smack-bang in the middle, without headphones, friends, or by the end, sanity. Later my friends and I would compare notes and come up with the conclusion that the chant shared remarkable similarities with cultist brainwashing techniques; I leave you to draw what conclusions you will.

Now that I think about it, that shotgun I mentioned earlier would have been a good idea.

So, fifteen years- or 45 minutes, depending on your perspective- later, we arrived at the training camp, where we were split into four groups to learn about why we should not do Duke of Edinburgh. Firstly was the ‘campcraft’ group, in which we were told about where not to put our tents (anywhere) what to avoid (everything) and what not to do (anything), how to tell if something is dangerous (it exists). We were then given a very realistic simulation of putting up a tent, in the sense that there were no instructions and five tent pegs were missing. Following that confidence-inspiring section, we went to first-aid, where we learnt about how to treat the multitude of potentially fatal injuries that would undoubtedly besiege us as soon as we began our journey (up to and including being stabbed by a permanent marker), and then onto Navigation, which half the group got lost while finding. No, I am not joking. No, I was not one of them. Yes, I spent a good five minutes laughing at them. I regret nothing.

The most awe-inspiringly scary part of the day, however, was the equipment section. “Now, if you look here, my assistant is holding up a -20 four-star Thermarug© sleeping bag with the compatible D-range Thermalift© sleeping mat. This combination is an easily affordable $350 (GST not included) and I highly recommend it. However, if you’re looking for a cheap buy, there is always the slightly heavier C-range. Now, moving onto tents...”

You see my issue. By about halfway through the presentation, I had gone into what is commonly known as ‘retail shock’, a comatose-like state that is an instinctive self-defence mechanism in the face of being expected to buy several tons of expensive camping equipment and lugging it around for several days. It’s a 2-day camp, not a house move. The money could be better spent on other things, like schoolbooks, or free education for the entire of Sub-Saharan Africa. And that’s not even beginning on the weight. Some species of ants have been found to be able to carry up to fifty times their own weight; they have nothing on the average hiker. “Oh, It’ll be fine,” grinned the instructor at a tentative query, answering with the smug self-assuredness of someone who knows full well both that it won’t be and that they’ll far, far away when we find that out.

Still in a state of shock, we were herded back onto the bus- but with enough consciousness to barge to the front of the line- and drove back home to the competing strains of ‘I SAID BOOM-CHIC-BOOM!’ and ‘I CUT DOWN TREES, I WEAR HIGH HEELS, SUSPENDERS AND A BRAAAAAAAAAA!’. I could almost imagine the bus driver complaining to his family that evening about the group of cross-dressing lumberjack cultists he was forced to ferry back and forth.

However, the strangest part of the whole day was that on the way back, it actually became a good idea. Sure, we would spend most of it being chased by poisonous animals or falling over and being suffocated under the weight of our packs, or perhaps being converted to some bizarre cult based around a chant of ‘I SAID BOOM-CHIC-BOOM!’, bet all of that somehow seemed insignificant.

So, when you see the latest piles of camping equipment get onto a bus for Duke of Ed, look out for me. I’ll be the one at the front of the line with the shotgun and extra emergency tent pegs.

Note: This article was written for Smog by a third party, and does not necessarily represent the views of Smogblog or its administrators.


(Note from Smog McSmoggy: Look out for Part 2 in the coming weeks.)