We Should Have Stayed

This time the turn off the Princes Highway was to the right, into the Colquhoun forest, and then down narrow dirt roads through the bush to a camp Anth had found on WikiCamps. It was only ever meant as a stepping stone, somewhere to break the run toward Bairnsdale.

Log Crossing was already busy when we pulled in. Spring had arrived, Melbourne was getting closer, and we suspected this was something we would have to get used to: other people wanting the same quiet places we did, at the same time. We reversed into a spot and agreed, without much discussion, that we would be staying only the one night.

Then, sitting in the bus with people setting up all around us, we both admitted what neither of us had said out loud. We should have stayed at the beach. We had given up the sound of the waves and a camp we loved, all to save forty-five minutes of driving. Forty-five minutes. From where we were sitting, it looked like a poor trade.

We went for a short walk along the East Gippsland Rail Trail, which runs close by. It was the kind of path that asks for bikes, long and easy and winding off through the trees, and we stood on it for a while working out where it went. Not this time. This time there was Torrin to collect and a train to meet. We filed it away for another visit, one without a deadline.

Back at the bus, more campers kept arriving, squeezing into gaps that were not really gaps until the place was full past bursting. We went to bed early, planning to be gone as soon as we could the next morning.

And we were. Log Crossing might have been lovely with no one else around, and that is how we like to camp, but that was not the version we got. We left it early, and kept the rail trail for another time, when we could bring the bikes and nothing would be waiting for us at the end of it.Read more