A Camping Trip To Remember!

• Jorja Wicks, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2017

The camp fire flared ferociously before me, spiky and fierce in the wind. 'Just like a dragon's breath' I thought. It sparked and then burst in front of me with a short, sharp pop. The red-hot wood glazed beneath the white ash. As I sat there watching and waiting my face heated immensely. The fire crackled and popped and the freshly-added wood went up in flames.

While Dad cooked dinner, I decided to go and pack up my mess of clothes in my tent. Dad's tent was directly next to mine and I could hear his portable radio announcing tomorrow's weather forecast; "...and in the areas in and around Glasford, floods are predicted because of the previous weather events: huge thunderstorms and lots of rain..."

As I rushed out to tell Dad, I looked up at the sky. We were only just out of Glasford and there was not a single cloud in the sky. Dad would disagree, in fact, he would probably think I just went bonkers. After I had given Dad the details, I went back into my turquoise tent to get my twinkling, tan telescope. He had said he believed me but as I went back to my tent I heard him mutter to himself "Yeah, as if".

It was the perfect night for star gazing and fortunately I was able to find my telescope in my piles of my brand-new camping things. As I looked through it I thought about my dream; to become an astronomer. I loved the stars. Then I began to notice dark storm cloud cover and decided to clean up. And when I was finished we ate dinner; mouth-watering mutton and vegies all cooked in the camp oven.

While we ate dinner, I thought of home and my Mum and siblings. I hoped that they were aware of the floods and had time to prepare for them. I hoped that the floods wouldn't start until I was home so that I could see them one last time. I hoped that they were warm and that they had shelter, food and water. I hoped they were safe.

We had dessert then packed up so we wouldn't have much to do in the morning if we had to leave quickly. It then started to rain, not heavily, but it was still raining so we went to bed. It poured all night and even though it was only drizzling in the morning Dad said we should go home.

Back in Glasford, the rain was pouring down. We drove along a little creek (normally it had the capacity for two metres of water) which was now over-flowing. Pretty soon we were evacuating the car into knee-deep water. It took no time until it was covering our chests. I was so worried. I grappled Dad around the shoulders. Home was right around the corner and it seemed as if there was no chance of survival.

Unless...