So here we are again...

…back at Toogoolawah. We get back early evening and the place is deserted as everyone has obviously gone to the pub, so we settle down to an evening of foosball, supping the remaining beer and wine we’ve got from the trip to Fraser. Halfway into the third game Rob glances up at me and immediately freezes. “Don’t move, you’ve got a Huntsman on your head” ( a Huntsman is a spider which can get bigger than your hand and although not deadly can give a particularly painful bite). I’m not convinced it isn’t a wind-up even when Laura backs him up, until with a swipe with my flipflop (aka thong) rob bats it off my head and onto the floor where he stamps on it immediately. A relative baby by huntsman standards its probably not much bigger than an inch but its still a bit of a shock anyway, I think Shaz with his arachnophobia is affected more than me.

The “learning curve camp” is set to start the next week so later that night we get the first arrivals who have travelled all the way from Nagambie near Melbourne. The next morning we are subjected to something akin to alcoholics anonymous meeting as we each in turn have to stand up and give our name, jump experience and what we aim to get out of the week. It’s a bit awkward, but funny nonetheless and at least we get to know the small crowd that have turned up from the offset. Tom and Leila had completed their AFF the week before so Leila was raring to join in the camp too. (Unfortunately for Tom drunken escapades to celebrate qualifying had led him to do a naked flare run and he’d burnt his finger pretty badly in the process, so badly in fact that he had to undergo a skin graft on it later that week.) One great thing to happen as part of the camp was that all the landings were filmed and then debriefed at the end of the day. Of course if you know you’ve fallen over earlier in the day you are cringing by the evening as your moment of shame is played back but it was all done in good humour. The only person who didn’t seem able to take it was one of the organisers. He had been giving the debrief all week and was only too quick to criticise if he thought someone was deliberately aiming to get close to the camera and look cool on purpose. On the final day he did exactly that and managed to actually collide with Emma who had been doing the videoing all week. Fortunately neither of them was badly hurt but he then left before giving the debrief that evening…hmm…

The usual occupation of watching videos continued whenever we got a rain shower and Zoolander took on cult status. People were being asked for “Blue Steel” or “Magnum” poses and the evening video was played to a chorus of “That Rob Simpson, he’s so hot right now”. They even had a “walk-off” to celebrate the end of the camp, which Wayno and Suzie rightfully won with their costumes and synchronised “going monk”. (You’d have to watch it to understand… or maybe do what we did and watch it about ten times in a week…)

All during the week of the camp Rob and I had been beavering away making a proper bed for the camper van (or should I say, Rob had been beavering and I’d been gophering), we’d acquired some wood largely for free from the timber yard, the only planks we paid for being for the top where we wanted to assure that everything was on a level. By the weekend the bed was complete and we were ready to do a more extensive tour of Australia, or at least Queensland.