Stagg Chili - Careful, it burns

Camping is fun. I do it at least twice a year. There's two trips I take, one around March and another around November. I won't go on much about the one I take in November because it's a bit of a secret 60's surf spot and the locals will kill me if I spread the word. So how do I know about it? My friend was a local. We went there for years before he died.

Today I'm going to talk about a camping spot I discovered many years ago by accident from an idiot bike riding friend. He's not an idiot because he rode bikes, he's just an idiot. We'll call him Bill. I'm using his real name to throw you off into thinking that's his false name to protect his identity, betting on the fact that people are too suspicious these days.

Anyway, the camping destination is Sofala, located about 40 km's North of Bathurst, home of the great annual racing event where Holden vs Ford in a battle to conquer "The Mountain". It's a lovely, hilly track that's actually got people living on the side lines. The track, even though it's a dedicated track and not a street that's been converted to a track once a year, it is a public road and you are allowed to drive on it any time you please. Watch out for the under cover cop who has a nice, fast car to catch you. Imagine the day you land that job. Being a cop and driving around the track all day. I'd get fired the next day for speeding, and probably letting anyone else on the track have a go at it too. "Hey, it's a race track!"

So, Sofala. How did I find out about it? One day my friends who I use to ride with said "Lets go camping one day soon." And I said, organise it and I'll be there.

The plan was to ride to Bathurst, and that's about it. I brought a tent, a sleeping bag, some basic food, a knife, a small saw and a torch (that's a flashlight for you United Stations fans). My friends brought nothing with them besides a backpack full of clothes. We arrived in Bathurst and I turned to my friend and ask "Right, we're here. Now what?" He shrugged, "I duno". I rolled my eyes, told them to go get food from the grocery shop across the road and come back here in 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, I went to the information kiosk to ask about places to camp that are friendly to bikers. The rather fetching country bumpkin (read: hot farmers daughter) said "You can go around here to camp, but it's a caravan park and they charge you, or you can travel 40 km's North to a place called Sofala, where a lot of it is private property, but you are allowed to camp anywhere along the river. Blink and you'll miss it, so stay alert."

We'll take it!

So I took the map, and when my mates got back, I said "Follow me".

Sofala is a small town. When we first arrived there was a sign at the entry into town which told you what Sofala was about. In its hey day there were over 28,000 people. Which is a heck of a lot in a town this size. Every inch of the river had been mined for gold during the Gold Rush. The sign now says there's about 12 people living in town, although in 2006 there were 200+ people there. A lot of them frequent the pub. The general store closed down about 5 years ago when the old lady who ran it died. It's now been fenced off. A new take-away shop is open which serves Fish 'n Chips, burgers, and so on. The pub is still there and recovered nicely from the floods in 1986 where the back half got washed away.

I love Sofala because every time I enter that pub the regulars don't snarl at you because you're not a local. They greet you as if you're their mate and they just haven't seen you in a while. I struck up a conversation with one of them a couple of days ago. We did the getting to know you, then complaining about city problems, living in suburbia, and him complaining about country life, but still sticking it in that his lifestyle is better than mine.

My mates and I arrived at about 2:00 pm and decided to start setting up the tent, get the table out, and have a beer. We then harvested some wood just for the night and scouted out bigger trees that had fallen to drag back to the campsite for chopping up and sawing tomorrow.

The fire was lit for the evening and we cooked up some food. One of my mates stuck a can of Stagg Chili directly on the fire and I said "That's going to explode. I've seen Mythbusters and cans explode. This will explode."

They all assured me it was okay..... lies. They had no idea.

Then BOOOOOOM! Sure enough, the can exploded. Though, it exploded all over my mates face and clothes. Stagg Chili everwhere. Boiling hot. Chili hot. And a large chunk of chili and meat stuck to his forehead, which ended up burning his skin so badly that it started to bleed. He was in the direct firing line of this can. His face was burning from the heat of the chili and the temperature of the chili. We all laughed. Now he has a scar on his forehead.

He was validated the following day when he took the hot plate off the fire with a shovel, then 5 seconds later, grabbed it with his hand. Left a nice red mark on his fingers. He is a bit green when it comes to camping though, and each year I've taken him he slowly learns something new. I think this years lessons were about hot things. Last year's lesson was about knives.

Besides having to babysit with the cooking and told-you-so's. I enjoyed myself. I got a bit of a laugh at someone else's misfortune. Which I'm not happy with myself about, but one can't help but feel some humour enter my body when watching someone who calls their daughter clumsy as anything, "Don't know where she gets it from" and continuously hurts themselves almost while saying it. It's hilarious. Well, I find it humorous.

I did most of the cooking again, mostly because I wanted to eat while all the food was hot, not wait for one thing to cook then wait for the next thing to cook and the first thing I cooked getting cold. So I blazed through breakfast, lunch and dinner so we all ate at the same time, and all the food was hot, and cooked right.

Camping was great. Entertaining. Relaxing. And I can't wait to do it all again next year just to see what my mate hurts himself with this time.