Sat Jun V

Camp!!! Didn’t actually leave until 11.15 but a nice day. Get to Algies Bay, set out beds, play softball. Rod arrives after Tea and comes oppossum shooting (Shoot at 6, kill 1 [16%])! (Gary’s shot), then leaves after devotion. In bed Murray Thatcher tells us 2 unbelievable ghost story – imagine calling a ghost Led Zeppelin – about the area.

We were not really camping as such. We were staying in something akin to a village hall, with a number of different rooms and a kitchen and bathroom. I’m not sure now if the venue was changed because of the heavy rains of the day before or not. It seems slightly odd that we would not go somewhere so sturdily built just because it was raining.

I remember lying in bed listening to Murray’s stories. He was one of the oldest members of the group, already sporting a luxuriant moustache of the sort now normally only found on Eastern Europeans and pederasts. Even so, I was sufficiently familiar with the name Led Zepplin (even if I had no idea about their music or how to spell the name properly) not to believe a word he was saying.

Rod Hare was the other of our group leaders (along with Sheelagh McKay). Karen used to refer to him as ‘Rodney Shortcuts’ as he apparently used to take her group on shortcuts which would turn out to be longer than the original route. I don’t remember him trying this with us at any time, although as I was never in charge of either driving or navigating on any of our trips away from Mount Albert I cannot be certain that he didn’t.