The news last night that the ever-present, 1/40 scale roadside replica of Uluru on the Pacific Highway burnt down no doubt brought back a flood of memories for people who were of school age in the 90s and 2000s – and not just because of the incredibly weird golliwog display inside it. It was not only a petrol station and part of the enormous failure that was Leyland Brothers World, it was also the frontage for The Great Aussie Bush Camp, the stock-standard default school camp that everyone who went to a public school within the Sydney–Newcastle sphere went to. If you didn’t go, you probably heard about someone who did.
The promotional video for the GABC on the current website – which posits, incorrectly, that the camp is ‘Way Too Much Fun’ – suggests that the structure of things has not changed dramatically since I was there over a decade ago:
It contained all the activities one would expect of a school camp, which would prepare children for the fine motor skills they would continue to use throughout their lives, such as navigating a precarious network of suspended ropes and climbing a 10 metre tall wooden pole and leaping off it. The kind of skills you can’t thrive without in the modern world. All thanks to The Great Aussie Bush Camp
It was a bonding exercise for school kids delivered at criminally budget pricing – or, as someone here in the office called it, “the Mecca of teenage sexual awakenings” – but it was also so much more. For many it was the first camp they went to in high school, early in the year, and therefore was the first big moment kids had to stake their claim on who they were going to be for the rest of their school career. Who would piss themselves catastrophically on the ropes course, leaving psychic scars well into adulthood? Who would take their place as king of the school through a program of ritual dackings? Who would get a wristy in their tent while everyone else was at the ‘disco’?
One of the nights at camp was always designated as the ‘movie night’, in which a group of up to a hundred kids were crammed into the ‘theatre’ – which was something of an oversell, considering the space – to watch a teacher-approved movie on a small projector screen. A quick straw poll has identified Finding Nemo and National Treasure as common screenings, but knowing the cinematic tastes of NSW schoolteachers over the past two decades it’s almost guaranteed that Remember the Titans also made a strong showing. I don’t know what it is about Remember the Titans and the NSW Department of Education, but they absolutely fucking love that movie.
Who could forget the ‘ghost story’ that camp counsellors told? I may be hazy on the specifics, but I believe it was about a pair of siblings named ‘the Doogie brothers’ who murdered children at the camp at some indistinct point in the past and left their bodies in the lake which the famous dual flying fox now travails. It’s an incredibly weird story to tell a bunch of thirteen-year-olds. Unless I’m way off-base, I think the punchline of the story was that the brothers were arrested, but there was an undisclosed third Doogie sibling who was still possibly murdering teenagers at the Great Aussie Bush Camp? Crazy that it didn’t make the news, considering the frankly staggering body count.
And yes, the Leap of Faith! Some people I spoke to remembered it, others said it was after their time, and others said it existed but they were too young to do it. I personally believe it has been there for decades, maybe centuries. It did what it said on the tin: you climbed a shaky 11 metre pole while your friends stood down on the ground hurling encouragement and venom in equal measure, then jumped to a trapeze which was either one metre or about one hundred kilometres away depending on who you ask. I want to know what the design process was for the Leap of Faith. Did they have a brainstorming session at The Great Aussie Bush Camp? Did some genius unrecognised in his time just straight up say “What if we built a big-ass pole and got kids to jump off it?”
The now-charred husk of Uluru was also where the kids would come together for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, to enjoy Rice Bubbles which were somehow stale despite ostensibly coming straight from the box. You would sit and attempt to enjoy your meal – which, in one memorable case, was literally just flavoured ice – completely unable to talk to your friends because the Vengaboys hit Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! was being blared at a dangerous volume over the ancient sound system within the structure. That’s a saucy song to play to a bunch of hormonal teenagers in gender-segregated tent lodgings, come to think of it.
But please, sound off in the comments. Tell us your experience. We want to know everything. Vale, the 1/40 scale Uluru. Never will teenagers have their most formative experiences within your cold hull again.
