A Fire In The Middle Of A Very Boring Holiday

• Thomas William Tamara, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2009

It was sunny but damp. I was in a tent in Echuca at a camp with my family. The tent was barely holding on due to the heavy rain yesterday. My Dad was reading the newspaper, and my Mum was reading a magazine. My sister, Grace, and I were silent. We could hear the people next door playing game boards, or at least we thought. “Uno!” said one of the people next door. They were always playing Uno, if not Twister, or Monopoly. “This is SOOOOO BORING!” I groaned in terror. “Yeah, well who was the one that brought one game instead of two?” Grace sneered. “Be quiet! I’m trying to read!” Dad growled. The only game I brought was Battleship, and I always won. “I know! Let’s play Celebrity Heads!” I exclaimed. “BORING!” Grace mumbled. “If only Mike was awake.” Mike is our brother. He’s a little lazy. “Do you want to wake him up?” I whispered to Grace. “If you want,” she replied.
I snuck up to Mike and whispered loudly in his ear. Mike began to stir up. I egged him on more. Mike suddenly woke up. “What? Are you crazy?” Mike screeched. “All three of you shut –“
Dad never got to finish his sentence, because an alarm suddenly droned on and on. “What’s that?” Mum asked. I peeked outside and saw what looked like a stampede. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a pandemonium of people and fire,” I said calmly. Mum and Dad ran out the caravan like a bat outta hell. “This is not my lucky day,” I muttered to myself. I walked out the caravan with Grace and Mike. “Let’s get outta here for once,” Mike said, yawning a bit. I walked out casually. Then what I saw stopped me in my tracks: a fire blocked the entrance/exit. “We can’t escape,” I muttered sadly. “Looks like we need to take a detour to get outta here.” “But where’s the other people?” Grace said anxiously. “Must have gone out,” Mike assumed. “Quit the chit-chat,” I barked. “Let’s go!”
To get out, that meant going through the bushland and work our way out. Let me tell you, walking through the bushland alone took what seemed like hours. And then we had to walk our way out along the trees. When we assumed was the entrance/exit, I began yelling, “Mum! Dad!”, and began running down the incline along with my siblings. When I made it down, Mum and Dad were there, crying their hearts out in joy. They hugged me and my siblings. “How did you escape, Mum?” I asked after the big reunion. “Your Dad and I followed the stampede.” “We just made it, because suddenly a huge log was on fire and then it dropped down near us. Thank goodness you were OK.”
What I can tell you is, that was really boring, until the fires suddenly lit nearly the whole camp down. At least my family was OK. That’s how it ended.