This is planned to start around 7pm on Thursday night, April 29, 2021. Note that this time it’ll be winter, so it’ll be dark by this time, and obviously colder than summer. Feel free to come earlier, set up, and have a meal before we get under way. I’ll probably be there from the night before.
PLEASE NOTE
If you want to eat, you’ll have to bring your own food.
If you want to sleep away from bugs and out of the cold, you’ll have to bring your own tent.
If you don’t want to sleep on the ground or in a car, you’ll have to bring a mattress and/or sleeping bag.
This is my list of things to bring. You don’t have to bring everything that’s on the list, and you might want to bring something different, but it serves as a pretty good guide.
It’s worth drawing up a meal plan (what you’re going to eat, and when) to make sure that you have a reasonably balanced, reasonable amount of food.
It’s worth bringing earplugs, because it’s a public campsite.
If there are items you can’t get, talk to me, and we’ll work something out. I have spares of most things.
WHEN
From 7pm on Thursday, April 29 until early Sunday afternoon, May 2. You will not get back for a morning church service.
If you’re coming from the Central Coast, follow these directions:
Get on the freeway, heading north.
Take the Mandalong Rd/B53 exit towards Morisset/Cooranbong
Keep left, follow signs for Mandalong Rd/Mandalong and merge onto Mandalong Rd, drive for 1.7 km
Turn right onto Deaves Rd, drive for 3.8 km
Turn left onto Freemans Dr, drive for 1.0 km
Turn left onto Martinsville Rd, drive for 4.5 km
Turn left onto Watagan Rd, drive for 3.6 km
Continue onto Martinsville Hill Rd, drive for 3.5 km
Slight right onto Watagan Forest Rd (unsealed), drive for about 3.9 km, eventually passing signs for The Pines picnic area, Olney Headquarters, and The Pines campground.
Turn right at the signs for the Casuarina and Turpentine camping area. If you’re getting directions from Google Maps, it’ll tell you to go past this … don’t. Turn right at the signs for the Casuarina and Turpentine camping area.
Follow the signs to the left, to the Casuarina camping area.
Follow the road most of the way to the end, and you should find me. There will be a 4m x 4m blue dome-shaped canopy somewhere near.
I’d encourage you go through the Daily Prayer, well, daily. Not as a liturgy, but as a guide to where the Holy Spirit wants to take you for the day.
This was the first BASIC I’ve endeavoured to run in the bush, and, well, it can be done. We did run into some trouble towards the end, but it worked out really well, so I don’t know if it was God encouraging us to do something in particular, or if he was exploiting something the enemy meant for evil and discouragement. Either way, it worked out really well.
There were six of us: me, my brother, our two oldest sons, and two other guys from my church. We weren’t really sure about the weather, since unusually, it had been raining a bit. Quite a bit. I consulted with my wife, and she offered to spend time at a hotel or resort for a few days if we thought the rain was going to be excessive, and wanted to use the house. If I recall correctly, the prediction was a 20% chance of up to 8mm of rain, so I made the call, and told everyone that we were going camping.
My brother and I arranged to meet up at around midday on Thursday, and that went well. Unfortunately, my work suddenly ramped up (duh), and because my customers have government contracts and there were sudden hard deadlines on delivering reports (under penalty of non-compliance), I had to remain in contact with the office until everyone was settled. It’s (kinda) good that I’d just recently changed carriers, and I had reception for the day and a half that I needed it.
We set up the big 4m x 4m canopy, and then the tents, and then the rain started in earnest. We had to dig some trenches around the big canopy to stop the whole thing being washed away, but after half an hour, it stopped. The sun came out, and the entire forest resumed whatever it had been doing with an innocent “what, who me?” kind of feeling to it. I didn’t get any photos, but it was truly wet. Dealing with it was a bit of an adventure, but that was pretty much all of the rain we had. There were a couple of showers, but really, we could walk around in them with no worries at all.
I set up the media centre so we could watch the content, and this time, I’d remembered everything I needed. The dry run I went through with my brother started with me realising that I’d left the remote behind. Sheesh.
The media centre consists of the following items:
An Engel battery box.
A 65 Ah deep cycle marine battery for the box.
A Digitech 4K Android media player. I’m seriously considering replacing this with one of the new Google Chromecast devices.
A 23 inch computer monitor.
A JBL Charge 4 speaker.
Everyone was there by 7.30 pm, and we got the first session started. I have to say, watching the trailer for Man of Steel always pulls me right in.
Most of us ate really bad yummy food, while a very few of us ate sensibly. There were fires every night … I’d brought a couple of bags of firewood and kindling with me, and others foraged for fallen wood. It all burnt well 🙂
Everything proceeded well until Saturday afternoon. For some unknown reason, the battery suddenly went from 52% charge to about 5% charge between lunch and the start of the “Rescue the Beauty” session. It might be because I left the speaker plugged in, but I can’t imagine that it would draw that much current. Fortunately, I’d brought a laptop, and was able to play the “Beauty” session using that. Then we had dinner, and lined up for the “Conversation with the Team”, and found that over the course of about 5 minutes, the laptop dropped from half charge to nothing, and it turned itself off. Huh.
We made the decision that we’d stay the night, and then return to my house for the last two sessions. Then one of the guys came up with the brilliant idea of streaming the “Conversation” through a tablet that someone had brought (must have been accidentally, because I’m sure we were all unplugged…), and putting the sound through the speaker via Bluetooth. Well, that was just perfect. We sat around the fire and listened to the team, and toasted marshmallows. It was a much better way of doing it than just sitting around under the canopy.
We slept well, then packed up first thing. It was a 45 minute drive back to my place, and we stopped off on the way for a fast-food breakfast. When we were all there and ready, we watched the “Sonship” and “Where to go from here” sessions. My wife, bless her wonderful heart, stopped off on the way home from church, and picked up a whole lot of hot chips for the perfect lunch to finish the weekend.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Thank you, John Eldredge and the Wild at Heart team, who have been faithful with the message … in both walking in it, and in packaging it up for the rest of the world.
Here’s some video footage of the walk from the … uh … “facilities” to the camp site. It’s deliberately slow, so take your time and enjoy the forest like we did.
Dappled brilliance, lightness and shade Upon the forest floor is laid Endlessly varied, it dances and shifts Creating illusions of mountains, of rifts
Rustling leaves, crackling and soft Harmonise with birds aloft A tinkling brook adds treble and light Unkindly shattered as engines ignite
Cool crisp winter, freshness and chill Goosebumps and vapour breath, still … Climbing past treetops, the sun reaches west Caressing my face with warmth, and I rest
Steadfast Saviour, waiting for me Patiently, beside this tree Displaying your glory, day after day In hopes I’d be here … now I’ve found my way
I’m going to the Become Good Soil Intensive at The Tops next weekend. I feel very fortunate, because this is something that’s targeted at men in their 20s and 30s, and I’m in my 50s. However, Morgan sent out a video message to say that they were opening it up, and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I applied. And was accepted.
As part of a pre-Intensive letter, Dave and Morgan wrote about what to do in the lead-up to the event, and one of the things they said was this:
Plant a tree. Literally. I was asking the Father what He had for all the men in preparation for this event and He said, “Invite them to plant a tree, with Me.” Your own hands. Your own shovel. The details of where you do it don’t matter—your own yard, help out a friend. The most important part is to invite the Father into the entire process. Pay attention to what comes up in your heart and where you go with it. And send a picture and whatever pieces of the story you’d like to us at [their-email-address].
Over weeks following the letter, this particular bit of it became more and more important, and uncovered a very deep and long-standing agreement. Let me tell you a story.
A long time ago (more than 30 years ago), my parents built a house. They did it on a budget, but there were some non-negotiables. One, each of us four kids was to have our own room. Two, there needed to be a goodly amount of space. They got a 4,221 m² block of land (just over an acre), and put the rest into the construction of the five-bedroom house. That didn’t leave money for landscaping, or indeed, finishing the verandah at the back of the house. Shortly after the house was completed, I learned to use a mattock, because there was a lot of clay that had to be chipped away from the back of the house to prepare for the verandah.
A fair way into that, I got jack of the whole process. I mean, I wasn’t going to live there that much longer, I didn’t want the verandah … and so on with all of the rationalisations that adolescents come up with to not help out around the house. I downed tools, and told Dad that I wasn’t going to help anymore. He told me not to expect him to help if I needed anything. I told him that I’d pay someone if I needed anything done.
And there it was. The agreement.
Morgan talks a lot about being a generalist, and how valuable that is for a man as part of knowing that he has what it takes. Over the years, I’ve taken refuge in the notion that I’m very intelligent, and I can figure out anything I really need to do, if the circumstances dictate that I really can’t pay anyone else to. I’ve installed dishwashers a couple of times; I’ve installed a rangehood with my wife’s help (eventually with my wife’s help … that was a “growing experience”); I can install networks and any sort of technology, and I can write software to help out with pretty much any dreary intellectual task.
But outside? In the garden? Nope, that’s Fleur’s domain. That’s a whole ’nother kettle of fish. Let me tell you another story.
I hate mowing the lawn. I don’t know when this really came about, but I think it has to do with the fact that I can’t just mow the lawn. I love my wife, but she’s not a tidy gardener. So if I have to mow the lawn, it also involves moving hoses, picking discarded pots and tools, accidentally running over bits of broken pots, sticks, hidden tools, cutlery and so on. Also, we have many, many edges that have to be trimmed before mowing. I wouldn’t mind just mowing, but it’s not just mowing.
Anyway, one day, I was mowing (but not just mowing). It was hot, I was ticked off to epic proportions, and muttering under my breath. And puffing. And did I mention it was hot? I wear prescription sunglasses, and sweat was dripping down the inside of them. And because this is Australia, there was dust getting caught up in the sweat and making a mess of my glasses. Oh, and where to dump the grass clippings is a moving target. I can’t just dump it in the green waste bin … oh no, it has to go in the compost bin. But the compost bin is not close to where most of the mowing happens, and there is a lot of grass, so there is a lot of back and forth between where I’m mowing and the compost. And when the compost is full, the grass has to be dumped around the base of a tree. Which tree? I don’t know … I never really know, and if I guess, I usually guess wrong.
Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t get berated, and we don’t fight about it … but I usually need a long cold drink and a hammock in order to bleed off the stress. Or as Douglas Adams would put it, a “glass of perspective and soda.”
Anyway on this particular day, after not just mowing, I finally got inside. I was red in the face, probably dehydrated and cosmically annoyed. Fleur greeted me as I walked through the sliding door with, “Oh honey, it does my heart good to see you out there.”
WHAT?!? Are you kidding me? One of many things that came immediately to mind was “My wife delights in my misery!”
I’ve told this story several times now, and Fleur and I have got to the point where we laugh about it. She knows I can see multiple facets of any situation, and I know she loves me, so we talked through it.
And now Morgan and Dave are telling me to plant a tree. With my own hands.
Father, please help me through this.
I bought an olive tree. Why? Lots of reasons, but one of them is that it’s going to be a long time before it fruits. I don’t want to have false expectations on when it’s going to bear fruit, but I hope by the time the decade is up, I might start to see some. I decided on the olive tree.
Fleur and I decided where the tree should go. Or, more to the point, I asked her where the tree should go. Hey, she’s the gardener, and she has the plan. I figured that this was the course of wisdom. Spiritualise this if you want … I did.
I started digging, and discovered that almost directly below the grass was a layer of clay and almost-20-year-old building materials. Whatever had gone into making our house was still laying around, waiting to be pulled out of the ground to make room for growth.
It wasn’t enough to use the spade. I had to resort to … the mattock.
If I’d put some clay breaker on the ground some time before before, the job would have been a lot easier. As it was, it took a bit of pounding to get a deep enough hole, and that’s rough on the ground, and hard on the gardener.
A big thank you to the Ransomed Heart team. I’ve been sitting under your clay breaker for probably 15 years now, and the digging is a lot easier than it might have been.
The dirt that went back into the hole was a lot better than the dirt that came out. There was a lot of manure (courtesy of Fleur’s chooks) that’s going to be good for the tree. I think it would have been a dumb move to pack the old stuff in there without pulling out the crap.
And there we have it. Phil’s little tree, in the ground, and the tools are away.
One final thing that struck me. The apparent size of the tree depends a lot on your point of view.
It was starting to get bad. The scent of death was forced upon us yet again, but this time, it seemed to be coming from a place to which we had no access.
We’ve suffered this malodorous intrusion before, a couple of houses back. One was a bit of a false alarm though. We managed to track that down to one of the boys’ school bags, hung on the back of a door for the duration of the summer holidays. That was an unfinished chicken sandwich that was months past its eat-by date. Not impressed, but hey … we could just throw the bag out, right?
The other was a rat that had died in the roof, nestled in the insulation. I managed to get at that one by sliding some external tiles up and out of the way, and just reaching in. I didn’t have to climb through the roof, so I guess that was a plus.
There are only really two bad things about dead critturs in the roof: the smell, and what’s decided to live in them. When I pulled that rat out (I was gloved, and the glove got wrapped around the carcass and they were discarded together), its occupants were writhing around under the surface. It seemed to me that the maggots were just growing instead of maturing. I figured they had to be an inch long. It turns that I may have been exaggerating, but according to this article: https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/science/decomposition-fly-life-cycles, not by much.
Bringing us up to this event, we thought it was coming from the lounge room … maybe one of the Christmas visitors had dropped some meat behind a couch? Nope. I pulled out everything, and checked underneath. Nada.
Fortunately, Josh got the idea of sniffing up near the roof. I don’t know how he did that … he’s not that much taller than me, and I have no hope of getting my nose up there. OK, we knew roughly where it was, but how were we going to pinpoint it? The problem is that we now live in a two-storey house, and this seemed to be coming from an area between floors. We discussed it over dinner, and figured that maybe removing one the downlights would be the way to go. Because I’m not keen on getting involved in this sort of thing, I put it off until the following morning (today). Then I removed the downlight, stuck my phone up there, and this is the result .
In case you’re wondering, my words were: “Aaah … I think we got it.” Then Josh says “Ah, the camera!”. My words took me off guard when I listened at low volume. Ahem.
After that, it was easy. Albeit disgusting. Disposable glove, surface spray, disinfectant spray, and a lot of airing. There is no way I would have been able to crawl in there, so I’m really grateful for the large gap afforded by the downlights. Fortunately, today is a garbage collection day, and the collectors had not yet been around.
