Homeschool Family Camp

We have just spent a week with 30 other families at Wymah Valley Retreat at the Rainbow Diva's camp organised by the fabulous Jenni.

Nowhere is the drought more apparant than here. Wyman Valley Retreat used to be billed as "on the shores of Lake Hume" there is a boat shed there with a row of 4 catamarans right beside it. The lake lapped the fence apparantly. Only now the lake is 1km away and the trees that were once submerged are out there looking stark and dead. You can see the line on the hills where the lake used to be. You get a glimpse of water gleaming in the evenings as the sun goes down. And out where the lake used to be kids spotted echidnas, snakes and turtle shells. There's an eagle nest in a once-submerged tree. The hills are dry and bare, down to the red soil. The amazing thing is that all that is very beautiful, the view from the camp over the dry lake bed was quite something.

I'd love to show you a zillion photos of the children doing all sorts of wonderful stuff, but truth be told I was too busy lying by the pool to follow them around as chief photographer. If they were on school camp.... like with school, I wouldn't be around snapping now would I? No. And actually the other slight hitch was that our camera battery died on the first day, and I still can't find the damn charger, so I can't even download the few pics I did take. I took some on my iPhone, and I do love my iPhone a whole lot, but it's camera really sucks. I do have a couple of photos of the low ropes, because I mosied on up to have a look at what they were up to, but I'd have to blur too many faces. I'm sure you'll cope. Also worth mentioning is that the parents blitzed the low-ropes course. We rock, naturally.

So there I was lying by the pool.... Well not allll the time. Sometimes I drank coffee and chatted, sometimes I just chatted, I might have played on my iPhone a bit. Done a touch of opshopping (op shops are charity stores) Richard relaxed and read his book, went on a bike ride with a friend (far too energetic!) Stuff like that. And there was no pool-bar, major oversight! Anyway....

The kids did archery, abseiling, flying fox, orienteering, team games, low ropes, volley ball, disk golf and animal feeding with the camp bods. The boys thought animal feeding terribly naff but Squeeky Pants loved it. The organised activities took about 3 hours a day give or take. When they weren't doing that stuff they were swimming, jumping on the jumping pillow, riding their bikes, hanging out with friends and just, well, yanno... SOCIALISING. Rough life eh. In the evenings there were dances, and trivia nights and chatting and wine ...just the oldies, the young ones were too busy running around in the dark to worry about wine.

We had breakfast and lunch in the tent, and the dinners were catered. I didn't have to cook or clean ALL week. Because we were in a tent and almost everyone else was in the cabins, we had the whole toilet block to ourselves. Imagine, 10 loos and 8 showers just for Squeeky and I. Marvellous.

So we are home, and tired, and we picked up conjunctivitis, a cold, and a nice vomity bug that culminated in a spectacular chocolate-vomit-waterfall in the car. I'm never going to get all the vomit out of the seats nooks and crannies! Back to the grindstone, and the mountain of washing.