No broken limbs, no suspicious rashes or other medical ailments, no car break downs, and no broken, lost or stolen goods. Plus, we had fun! In all, I’d say it was a very successful camping weekend, despite our considerable lack of experience in said activity.
With that said, I did take away some lessons from the weekend with regards to taking technology on the road. The Energizer XP4001 Power Pack that I was so excited to bring along turned out to be a total fail. Maybe I didn’t use it properly, but I was only able to charge my Motorola Defy to about 40% before I took it off. Then the next time I tried to charge something, the Power Pack was out of juice already! It’s meant to be able to charge a phone around six times from a full charge, so I was definitely not impressed. I’ll need to try this again to find out whether it’s a fault with the one I have, which leads me to lesson number #1: Always stress test critical gadgets before depending on them as a power supply! I felt very lost without a charged up phone to play with, plus I ended up using both my Defy and my iPhone quite a lot (until they ran out of battery) for random Google searches (“Is a wombat a mammal or a marsupial”), informative Google searches (trying to find camping sites in the Jervis Bay/Kangaroo Valley area, as well as good bushwalking trails), and GPS navigation. I used the iPad a lot of impromptu movie nights, but the lack of extended battery situation meant that I couldn’t blog from my iPad well.
Cooking dinner on the second night on our gas cooker: Spam, fried rice and Mi goreng noodles! Also, check out my iPad playing Despicable Me - some nice dinner entertainment
My waterproof SLR case, on the other hand, was an absolute win. Naturally I was reluctant about dipping my four-thousand-dollar camera + lens into the water at the beach, but I followed the instruction manual, which says to test it before use by putting a paper towel in the case, sealing it up, and dunking it with water to see whether the seal holds. I was able to see for myself that it kept out water, although I was still nervous about trying on my camera. Still, I gamely packaged my 5D Mk II and 24-70mm lens into the case and brought it out with me onto Hyams Beach – and it worked like a charm! Here are a couple of shots I took that would’ve been impossible without the waterproof case. The clear plastic over the lens does hamper image quality somewhat – it makes images a little softer and skews the colours a bit, but still better than no photo at all! Lesson number #2: always read the instruction manual before using something as potentially damaging as a waterproof SLR case! (Lucky I didn’t have to learn this the hard way!)
The DiCAPac waterproof SLR case shrugging off all of the sand and water
F going for a dip - couldn't have taken this without waterproof housing on my camera!
Underwater shot
I was able to use my new Flip Ultra HD every now and then to film interesting moments… only after awhile I forewent the soft velvet pouch that it comes with and just chucked it into my bag “commando”. Bad idea – I now have two scratches on the the screen, which I find absolutely heartbreaking on a new gadget. It’s not a touchscreen though, and I’m hoping that I can buff it out with some scratch solution. I also discovered a ‘ding’ on the side of my Sony NEX-5′s 18-55mm lens – I’m used to treating my Canon gear quite rough, but they’re constructed from a tougher material and never show a scratch. Lesson number #3: keep everything in their cases, as anything that can get scratched will get scratched while camping!
Visiting Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay for the second time in my life was absolutely delightful – it’s renowned as having the whitest sand in the world, according to the Guiness Book of Records. F and I ended up going there on a whim (lucky we packed our bathers!), and we spent a nice morning splashing around in the cool blue water and taking photos along the rocky outcroppings. The folding chairs I bought along for camping worked a real treat, although a beach umbrella would’ve completed the picture nicely. As would taking along my Kindle! F remarked that it would’ve been great if she’d brought a book, and I agreed wholeheartedly. This is the second time in a row now that I’ve visited a beach and lamented not bringing along my Kindle, so lesson number #4: If there is even the slightest chance of a beach visit, bring your darn Kindle!
There were other, non-tech learnings I picked up over the weekend. Our trip ended up being very spontaneous and on-the-fly, as we opted out of the 3-hour canoeing adventures on the Saturday and Sunday, meaning F and I broke away from the main group and ended up having a delightful ‘choose-your-own adventure’ style weekend. And I think we ended up having a better time than we would have if we’d gone with the original plan! Definitely much more relaxing, in any event. The lesson I learnt from that was that it’s okay not to plan everything down to the tiniest detail and just do everything on the fly – provided you have the sort of personality that’s capable of spontaneous planning (and not everyone has that). Google was a big help in being able to look up things to do and places to go, and it also helped that I had been in this area two new years ago and had a vague idea of the sort of things we could do.
Impromtpu visit to Hyams Beach - beautiful white sands, clear blue water, and not outrageously crowded like the Eastern beaches in Sydney!
I also learnt that you can never have too much water! F and I brought along a pallet of 24 water bottles for two nights and two days of camping, and we plowed our way through it without trying! There’s no way I could’ve drank that much water at home over the same period of time, but the constant activity and heat made it an easy amount to get through.
On our first night setting up at the Bendeela camping grounds (which is just chock-a-block with wombats, btw!), we met our camping buddies for the weekend (although we only ended up staying with them that one night!), who were friends of a friend, and I was thoroughly impressed with their camping setup. Turns out two of them are camping veterans, and wow – they really had it all! Their tent was a lot nicer than ours, but they had so many little things that made it obvious we were dealing with pros: a foldable table that they used to put all of their condiments on (condiments! while camping! amazing!), they had a gas-powered light that they could leave on all night (so much better than keeping a torch on!), and mother of all wonders, they had an automatic air pump that blew up our inflatable beds in no time at all! I had no idea that such things even existed! This is an absolute must-have for when I go camping again. And yes, I will be doing it again 
Blur-o-cam shot of a wombat that seemingly appeared out of nowhere!
Very cool setup by our English friends
