OUR EASTER CAMP

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22100, 4 May 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR EASTER CAMP

A SEASIDE SAGA BY ELSIE K. MORTON " It's a great pity," said their father. " that you don't see more of the children. They're growing up so quickly and they'll lose all their pretty little ways before long. And 1 don't think you ought to go and bury yourself in that Windycot every holiday. I believe tho old place is damp. You nearly always come back with a cold." "It has been a triflle damp ever since tho roof fell in," I admitted. "But I just fix up an umbrella under that place where the shingles are off, and it keeps my bed quifo dry if it comes 011 to rain. And as for seeing more of the children," I added, with that simple directness that is the prerogative of all aunties, " last time I came to your place Bunnie asked me why 1 didn't put on a bit more powder, and Denis said there were two mistakes in my last article. Terry merely asked if our guavas were ripe yet and then ran out to play." " Oh, well, children are like that! They're very fond of you, really. You'd better como down to us at Bush Camp. It's going to be beautiful weather, and you've no idea how lovely it is in the earlj' morning, with all the birds twittering in the bush and the tinkle of the little creek running through the ferns. You'll come back a new woman!" " The weather will probably break, and I'll come back with the grandfather of all colds," I prophesied, " but. all the same, I think I will come. I'd like a few more swims before winter sets in." " Good-bye, Summer!" So I went. I started out soon after eight o'clock on Easter Monday morning, in a steady downpour that lasted all the way into town and half-way down to Waiheke. But when aunties give their word they have to keep it — that is one solid, basic fact that stands secure, immovable, in a world of chance and change. " Don't bring much," they had said. " Just your toothbrush and pyjamas and bathing suit, and perhaps a bit of fruit and cake." So I tottered up the gangway of the forlorn, rain-lashed little boat with a bulging hamper filled with lettuce and tomatoes, apples, sausages, bacon, a jar of preserved peaches, a meat loaf, si tin of biscuits and a pound or two of mixed sweets for the children. The cricket ball, rubber duck, magazines, toilet odds and ends, pyjamas and bathing suit, rug and cushion were in the canvas valise, and under my arm 1 carried a brownpaper parcel containing an eleventhhour inspiration, a genuine " dixie," as used by the lads in the trenches, price threepence, reduced from one-and-six. " Just the thing for camping," the salesman had assured me. " So strong and heavy—feel the weight!" I felt it not once but many times on my way to the boat. If it had cost one shilling, two shillings, even half-a-crown, I would probably have thrown it out the tramcar window, or hurled it down the launch steps with joyous relief, but threepence! No, you don't treat genuine, bona-fido bargains in that cavalier manner. So, with the rain running in rivulets down my neck and into my brogues, I staggered up the gangway and subsided on the nearest seat. There were very few passengers, but they all had a fair amount of luggage. I eyed them speculatively—mostly aunties and uncles, I decided. The deluge had ceased when we landed, and there was merely a steady .drizzle half-an-hour later, when the bus deposited me at Bush Camp. The Simple Life But the children were in fine fettle. " The creek is right over the bank," shouted. Denny. "Come and see! it's nearly under the dinner table!' 1 And it was. We sat there in our raincoats on forms and boxes at our open-air meal, with only canvas awning to shelter us from the pouring rain, with our bare feet in pools of water and the tiny streamlet, a rushing, muddy torrent, creeping ever nearer over the drowned ferns and grasses. The raindrops hissed on the stove as the camp-motlier, a gay figure in scarlet bathing suit and overall, made frantic dashes between the fry-pan and the table. The children went wild with joyous excitement as the rain came down in torrents; never had there been a holiday, quite like this one! Charlie-the-eel had been washed out of his pool, and had been found wriggling in the mud beneath the table; mother had stepped bsickwards into tho creek while she was washing up; and daddy had slipped at the very top of the bush track and landed on his back at the bottom.

" Auntie, do come and see how slippery it is after dinner. Do come — we won't let you slide right down!" I had not meant to. oblige—it was merely the sudden remembrance of the dixie that sent me helter-skelter up to the cot for my sodden brown-paper parcel. With a slithering rush and piercing cry I struck the soft patch on the way down, and landed, still clasping the dixie, in the midst of the happy little family even as daddy had done. But it was cheap at threepence, that welcoming din of mirth, those gales of childish laughter ringing out in defiance of the hissing rain and sullen roar of the surf. Stormy Seas

All the afternoon it rained, so we put on our bathing suits and ran down to the sea, played cricket on the sand and ran races, dashed headlong into the foaming breakers and held up our faces to the stinging rain. Oh, but it was a wonderful afternoon! And we thought of all the poor holiday crowds at the races under sodden umbrellas, soddenfooted, sodden-spirited, all the poor people sitting desolately in a thousand homes, looking out at the rain and pitying all the poor mad campers who had thought summer would outlast Easter 1 Even the seagulls joined in the joke, and wheeled overhead with jeering squawks of bird-laughter. A grey dawn ushered in a grey, windswept day, wind that bent the branches of the great pohutukawa over our little bush camp and came roaring down the bare hillsides. It had lashed the sea to foam and fury, and before breakfast we were already shooting the breakers that came riding inshore, breaking in smother of foam and racing up the sand at dizzy speed. The children were in the seventh heaven of delight—not ono day of the long summer had known seas like these! They threw themselves into the breakers, disappeared in smother of foam as the waves swept them up the beach and left them on the sand like baby seals, sleek and dripping, breathless, ready to race again to meet the next incoming monster. The storm died down at last. Holidaymakers appeared on the beach once more, dogs came chasing the seagulls, the foaming breakers slipped back with the tide and left off roaring. The little streamlet in the bush left off pretending it was a creek in flood, Charlie-the-eel came out of his hidey-hole and was discovered eating the butter, left inadvertently on a rock in his pool. "'Aren't you glad you didn't go to Windycot?" asked the children as the entire family escorted mo to the bus. "Rather!" I replied with enthusiasm. " I couldn't possibly have had such fun! And I might have caught a cold," I added, catching their father's eye. " Yes, that's what I told you," he agreed. " It's a draughty old place; damp, too, with that shingle off the roof. I always say it's only safe for you to go there in summer!"