Tonight, we crumbed the abs and cooked them in garlic butter. Anyone would have thought we’d laid on KFC or something — they went that quick. These camps weren’t so hardcore that we couldn’t have a few non-traditional items, like a frying pan or some condiments. It was a condition of the funding, and something old mate Chris had a hand in. Couldn’t be too traditional. Survival camp sounds great on paper, but the survival of the kids can never really be at stake. Traditional food, yarns, roughing it — that was about as far as it went. They could bring a sleeping bag and one set of spare clothes, but no phones or electronic devices. Chris had a satellite phone that could get coverage anywhere in the world, apparently — another tick on his safety list. I had my trusty old Nokia, which I would bet my ballsack had better coverage than Chris’s fancy model. One thing I did insist on was that we found our own water, along the way. Chris was a bit cagey about that, so he brought some water-purifying tablets. We all had water bottles and filled them at every clear creek we came to. I have all the watering places mapped out in my mind. I grew up here, after all. I know this coast like most people know their backyard. But there wasn’t as much water as I’d anticipated this time. It had been a dry year.

~

‘Come on, boys,’ said Chris the next morning. He was at the fire, building it up. ‘Sun’s coming up. Uncle Ben’s got more plans for us today.’ The boys were all sleeping on the thin, grey tarpaulin we’d brought along, to keep them off the sand. It was so wrinkled and old it looked like elephant skin. I was the only one with a decent camping mattress, thin as it was. And I had one of those expensive waterproof sleeping bags. I insisted on it — another condition of my employment.

‘Mornin,’ Chris. Damn, bruz, that smells good.’

‘What’s the plan today, then?’ he asked, a few minutes later, kneeling next to me and handing over a steaming cup. Survival camp or not, I wasn’t going without my morning coffee.

‘Gunna show the boys how to set a snare this arvo, when we set up camp,’ I said. ‘Hopefully we’ll get us a roo. Apart from that, we’ll walk up the coast and I’ll get ’em back in the water at low tide. They can gather some limpets and warreners.’

‘We’re pretty much out of drinking water, just so you know. I think the boys have finished their bottles,’ he answered.