CAMPFIRES

For my generation of Australians and those before me, enjoying a campfire is not a rare thing. However, for the current generation it is becoming rarer. Most bar-b-ques are often cooked on a sophisticated gas or electric heat source.  Even when most of these people cook when out bush where the majority of them travel, particularly in their huge off-road caravans (that rarely get on a dirt track, let alone ‘off-road’), there are restrictions to having a camp fire. On the well-travelled routes, there is little or no fire wood left, or it is prohibited to collect it. People could carry their own firewood, but most could only practically carry enough for a couple of fires. Better than nothing, but it means the campfire is a novelty, rather than the norm. 

For Australians, both aboriginal and earlier European new Australians, a campfire was part of their DNA. You literally couldn’t do without it. There was no other way of cooking. 

I had a psychiatrist on one of my trips. He reckoned that if he had his patients sitting around a campfire, he would have a lot more success with them, than lying on his couch.   

For nearly 20 years I carried a regular group of Melbourne legal people, on their annual legal recess in June. They loved their campfires, but on one occasion we were due to spend time in the Bungle Bungles in the Kimberley, where all campfires were banned— as they are in National Parks. I had never owned a gas bar-b-que of any kind, and I wasn’t looking forward to the couple of days there, living on cold tinned food. Admittedly I was very slack in not bringing a gas bar-b-que for that period; but I just didn’t. The first night we were sitting around like stale mullets without a fire, when the ‘chief chocolate fudge’ produced a parcel. We watched in anticipation as he opened it. 

It was a large blow-up plastic campfire! He set it up in the middle of our group and after a few quality McLaren Vale reds, we almost got used to it.) Being in the Kimberley, it wasn’t cold). However, the boys and I couldn’t see a way that we were going to cook on the bloody thing! We (the staff) were actually very embarrassed, particularly concerning the early morning breakfast cuppa. It was going to be non-existent and we were going to lose a lot of brownie points. So I came up with a desperate plan. I woke next morning, well before usual, took a gallon billy full of water and disappeared over the back of the camp ground we were forced to camp in. I went about half a kilometer, out of sight of early risers, including the very officious Ranger. I lit a fire and boiled the billy and then, carefully partly concealing it under my bluey coat, I hurriedly made my way back to our camp where our party were arising from their swags. With by then ‘luke-warm’ water, I made everyone a second rate cup of tea or coffee, helping to improve our somewhat damaged status, but it was hard work and we left a day early. Just so we could get back to where we could behave normally. 

Myself, and most of my mates, will enjoy a fair dinkum campfire for the rest of our lives and so will most of our kids, because they have been brought up with them. For a huge number of Australians in the future, that will never experience a campfire, I feel very sorry. Apart from the actual pleasure and practicability of a campfire, perhaps, more than any other country in the world, it is a big part of our history; it is part of who we are.