At Freshie we have always made our own fun. At first it was games played around an imaginary spaceship, going out on missions to explore new worlds. Then the camp curators thought it wasn’t a good idea for us to be climbing certain trees, namely the alien mothership. This didn’t stop the fearless Captain and his sturdy crew as they continued covert missions to the alien vessel - until the vessel was inexplicably destroyed by an unmentionable force known only to us now as “The Coming of the Great Green Chainsaw.”

When the Captain, “The Fuel Guy”, and their crew were not off on another adventure, they might be found competing in Indy car time trials on BMX bikes. This was going really well until someone thought the camp speed limit should apply to two wheeled vehicles as well, then promptly banned them from within camp grounds. At about this time the corrugated cricket/soccer field was smoothed out and the space began filling up with caravans, amenity blocks and other things. They built a mound to hold all the septic, but they banned us from playing on that too.

The camp commandants’ reign of terror raged on against the space explorers. A Sign was added to the Pool, letters were removed from the sign and letters were replaced on the sign. “No Skylarking in the Pool.” Just what is Skylarking anyway? Oh right, it means your head is the only thing that should be out of water. Freshie meetings used to be held in a great big tent. Let me ask you. If you had a tennis ball and someone was on the other side what would you do...? To put an end to our frivolity they stopped hiring a marquee and built a shed. Despite this, we kept coming back each year and found new ways to get ourselves into trouble ...er... I mean... entertain ourselves.

Well in the year 2010 we are taking back Freshwater Creek, “The Fuel Guy”, ably assisted by crewman Butcher, who not only outranks me, but gets to sit higher up in the tree, will be there leading you all on to glory. Sure the Alien spacecraft won’t be there and balls may not run down the shed’s roof as well as the old marquee’s. But there will be heaps of people to meet, food to eat and a load of insanely great fun things to do... just don’t tell Dennis...

I remember one year it rained so much that a few of the roads got flooded. What else do you do when faced with a flooded road? Break out the Skim-board...

I can still remember the first camp at Freshie. We hired a marque but someone forgot to tell the people putting it up for us that the two sides of the tents are meant to meet together. When they put it up it was in two halves with a 10 foot gap in the middle.  This was especially funny when it poured with rain and it went, meeting, gap with rain, and the rest of the meeting and stage.   

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