Have you ever been camping?
We love camping.
Not because it is always comfortable. It isn’t. Sometimes the ground is hard, the toilets are basic, the weather turns, and the wildlife is more determined than expected. But camping gives us something we find harder and harder to come by: simplicity.
No distractions. Limited device use. Less noise.
Just the outdoors. The weather. The people you came with. The slow work of setting up, cooking, walking, sitting, sleeping. The quiet reminder that the world is larger than whatever has been occupying your mind.
Some of our favourite places have been extraordinary.
At Mon Repos Beach in Queensland, we camped near the dunes of one of the world’s significant turtle-nesting beaches. There is something humbling about being close to that ancient rhythm of turtles nesting and hatchlings making their way to the sea.
Wilson’s Promontory in Victoria is beautiful in a different way. Granite mountains. Beaches. Wildlife everywhere. It also reminds you that nature is not just scenery. You learn to secure your food properly because wombats will rip through your tent if you don’t. We were there when a storm came in off Bass Strait. Tents were flattened. Trees were uprooted. People fled the campsite in the early hours. Camping thins the illusion that we are in control. You remember that creation is beautiful, but it is not tame.
Kanangra Walls in New South Wales is majestic. The facilities are limited — no showers, just pit toilets — but the views are astonishing. I love walking along the top of the walls, looking out across that great expanse. It is one of those places where silence does not feel empty. It feels full.
The Warrumbungles offer another kind of wonder. Great bushwalking. Plenty of wildlife. One of my favourite memories is walking through fields of kangaroos. And on the edge of the national park is Siding Spring Observatory. Kangaroos in the fields. Stars overhead. The ordinary and the immense in the same frame.
And then there is Tathra, a quiet coastal village on the south coast of New South Wales. A caravan park across the road from the beach. Summer air. Slow days. The simple gift of rest.
That, in the end, is why we love camping. It is not an escape from reality, it is a return to it. For a few days, life becomes smaller. Fewer possessions. Fewer tasks. Fewer distractions.
And because life becomes smaller, the world becomes larger again.
The Afterword 
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