#hell camp

when i was twelve my school sent all its year nine students class by class to a five-week camp, which will henceforth be called Hell Camp. here is the setup:

a four-hour drive out of the city into the outback, where there is a farm owned by the school for the express purpose of hosting Hell Camp

28 girls and 28 boys, each in their own dorm houses

no phones. no computers, no ipods, no TV. no internet (within our reach). we cooked our own food on fire stoves and wrote letters by hand to our parents and friends

no lollies, no soft drinks or juice, all our eggs and milk came off the farm

wake up at 5:30am every day to go for a 3km run and then chores on the farm, from milking the cows to chopping our firewood

Bible study every night because this was a Christian private school

“why???” u may ask. “why did your school subject tweens to a month of this???” supposedly to build character and teach u life skills but tbh idk how knowing how to crack a bullwhip is supposed to help me in life

but it wasnt just five weeks straight of same ol farm life there were other activities they had us do!! camp-like activities!! for example:

Pre-Survival

three days to prepare us because we were innocent younglings who barely knew how to start a fire

basically a campsite in the middle of fuckass nowhere? we rode horses there while the counselors (the Hell Camp resident teachers, but ones that deadlift 50kgs and kill spiders without batting an eye) drove with our bags and stuff and laughed as we got inevitably lost

have u ever used a dunny u have to empty urself

it is so gross. there is a field marked out explicitly for burying everyone’s shit, and u have to take turns. so gross. 

there was a shower which was a metal shed with a bucket of water hung up, which u heated over the fire before u went in and prayed it wasn’t too hot

this was like winter time and we slept in swags on the ground and when we woke up there was frost on our swags

i made an iron horseshoe??? the temptation to touch red hot metal is ridiculous tbh it looks so pretty

someone did touch theirs. it was not me. i heard them yell from across the field where i was helping feed horses.

in the middle of the second night the counselors took us to a giant rock in the middle of the bush where u could see the stars and it was amazing you could see the milky way and everything… but the thing was we had to spend the previous 20 minutes in the dark to get our eyes used to it so they had us hold onto each other’s sleeves and walk blindly into this rugged, rock-covered trail through pitch blackness, praying no one in front is going the wrong way

and then. the counselors played a trick on us by getting one of the kids to stay back in the forest and waited to see how long we’d notice. we didn’t notice until it was time to go back im so sorry Kimmy

Survival

ok this the real shit you went with the same group you were with in pre-survival and the counselors drove you out into the depths of the outback and dropped you and your group off with some tools, food, and tarpauline

and then u just lived out there for three days.

we couldn’t start a fire our first night because it’d been raining before??? our dinner was supposed to be rice, potatoes and carrots, and the carrots were the only edible thing bc u cant eat raw rice and raw potatoes.. u just cant.

there were wild dogs around. we never saw them, but we heard them awoo-ing a lot. so whenever someone split off from the main camp to go pee like two other girls would accompany them as an honor guard, singing Kumbaya to keep the hounds away

sometimes people would go alone and then there would be a Sound in the bush and then you’d just hear them screaming “MAMA’S MAKING KAN TONG”

on our last day the counselors set up targets with drawings of kangaroos on them, handed us a bow and 20 arrows, and said “if u can shoot the kangaroo we’ll give u sausages for your last meal”

never in my life will i ever see such ferocity from 12- to 13-year-old hungry girls again

when it was another group’s turn to be on survival, my group was on normal farm duty, and we were out clearing bush scrub when we heard the survival group girls talking and we realised we’d gotten too close.

“hello?? hello??? is anyone out there?” “oh my god someone’s out there oh my god we’re gonna die” “COME OUT, WE HAVE WEAPONS”

THIS WAS A LIE. WE KNEW DAMN WELL THEY HAD THE SAME THINGS AS US AND THOSE THINGS WERE TWO SHOVELS AND A HEAVY DUTY CLIPPER.

and our fucking counselor just went “shhh!!” to us and herded us back like he just straight up left those nine girls thinking there were bush serial killers out for them

also apparently a tree fell on someone’s head at some point in their survival

at night we slept in a row like snuggling each other cause it was So Fracking Cold and lemme tell u it’s an experience being spooned by the girl who used to sigh whenever you raised your hand in class

Four Day Hike

what it says on the label

55km in four days, carrying all your food, sleeping bags, tents, clothes, toilet paper etc. and minimum 2L of water bottles you could refill at big barrels set out at designated stop points

this is, without a doubt, the single worst experience of my life

nothing good happens when u hand a group of kids a map and a compass and tell them “we’ll look for you if you’re not at the campsite by sundown but apart from that you’re on your own”

i was with an athletic group of kids?? they were Walking So Fast and i was just staggering along with my unfit friend like this is how i die on a godforsaken hill on our way to god knows where

actually i had an asthma attack and they left me behind for a bit fun times

the hike went through some willing farmers’ land and one boy who stupidly climbed a fence got chased by a bull

they sent us off group by group so we’d all make our own way, so whenever u bumped into another group you were like. okay one of us was going the wrong way and it better fucking well be you

there weren’t any showers or anything so we basically all wore the same clothes for four disgustingly sweaty days of hiking

someone used an anthill as a toilet bc it had a nice big hole to drop ur toilet paper down

the ants did not appreciate this

when you run out of toilet paper and it’s only 11am

Solo

this was it. the culmination of the camp. the ultimate character building experience.

which was just 24 hours of alternating boredom and sudden visceral terror now that i think about it

u got dropped off (again in the middle of nowhere see a theme yet) with tarp, a lil trowel, and a clipper, and u just set up camp and did whatever u wanted for 24 hours

they let u bring a bible.

i got really into Leviticus and Deutoronomy before it went dark

listen it was really really boring ok

AND HERE IT IS THE BIT WHERE I DIDN’T HAVE LIGHT WHILE CAMPING ALONE

listen when the sun goes down at 5pm, u go down too. there’s nothing else u can do?? u just gotta sleep???

or, like me, lie awake in mortal terror listening to the bush Come Alive

when the wallaby goes THUMP-THUMP-THUMP and you’re like holy shit this is it the abominable loch ness chupycabra has manifested in the australian outback and it’s going to eat me alive jesus christ protect me with the power of this bible

hence the sheer relief when the sun finally comes out and u can walk around without living in fear of accidentally walking face first into a spiderweb or scratchy lantana bushes

also a mini survey went around afterwards and i’m pretty sure a solid 60% of the girls took a shit on solo like… at long last u can take as long in the toilet as u want… without the other 27 girls banging on the door……

other miscellaneous stories that dont fit anywhere else:

one of the boys went missing?? he wandered off and couldn’t remember anything when they found him in the middle of the bush. cryptic

there was this one homesick girl who was REALLY homesick like she cried every day of the five weeks. by the end of the camp she’d approached everyone to talk about her Feelings and you’d just kind of groan softly when u saw her coming towards your bunk bc u knew u were in for a hopeless comforting session

on sundays sometimes we went to the nearby town’s elderly home to talk to the old folks and some of us could play music so we did little performances for them which was rly sweet!

there were lambs on the farm!! we named them Uggboot and i think Fleece Jacket or smth like that

there were cows too!! meat cows!! they were Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

my first time on cow milking duty i tried to herd the bull towards the milking pens bc i did not realise he was not a cow. i quickly realised when he took very fast steps towards me and i Got The Dodge Out Of There

we spit roasted an entire pig for the final feast before we left and i will never forget it. the first time in my life i had crackling. half the group was weak in the knees cause we saw the pig get slaughtered and the other half was just “sweet, more for me”

whenever the new fruit delivery came in and the hunger games commenced in the kitchen… tween girls are actually ravenous wolves u heard it here first folks

when u going to the bathroom in the bush and u feel something touch your butt… is it a stray hair? is it a piece of grass? is it a bug??? who knows but nothing makes your bowels loosen faster

the unholy horror of finding spiders wherever you least expect it

ANTS IN THE SUGAR

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil leaving the cupboard open for the ants!!!”

honestly so many things happened at Hell Camp that i can’t remember most of them anymore and it Rankles Me bc i know there were so many wild stories but here you go. some of the wildest ones.