The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 1 (May 1, 1932.)
The Camper-out
The Camper-out
Our recent summer saw more bush and seaside holiday camps than ever before. The simple life in the bush is the best thing in the world for a week or two for our city-pampered people. Highly popular, too, is the week-end tramping outing. The girls have taken to it, too, and it is an excellent correction to a too-long course of picture-shows and dance-halls, and other haunts of crowds. But one has noticed a tendency among week-ending girls, as well as youths, to overdo the swag-carrying habit. The inexperienced townbreds are apt to load themselves like packhorses, lugging all sorts of unnecessary impedimenta over the ranges. It is not a pretty sight, a young woman bent almost double under a packload she could profitably reduce by two-thirds. It is ridiculous to trudge up into the hills for a couple of days burdened with such things as heavy canvas tents, patent cookers, and excess quantities of iron rations. Some of these young people even carry gramophones with them, and wireless sets. That is not the way to enter into the spirit of the bush and gain the fellowship of the wilds.
The essence of bush-camping enjoyment, for a two or three days' jaunt, is to travel as lightly as possible. Most of the stuff so painfully packed can be done without. A party of half-a-dozen can do very well with just a couple of billies, one to fit into the other, for cooking purposes.
Tents are needless encumbrances in summer, if you are in the bush. It is a simple matter to run up a lean-to shelter with saplings, and a light calico fly, that will serve all bivouac purposes. All that each person needs is a blanket and a light waterproof ground-sheet. Oiled calico, in squares large enough to cover two or three people, is light to carry and easy to rig up in conjunction with the bush material. And let the morepork and the kaka and the tui have their say to you, instead of vulgarising the bush with gramophone crooning songs and jazz-steps.