Horse Camp.

I feel quite certain that when my mother and aunt got together to organise a holiday to an equine camp for my cousin and I, that they had the best possible intentions. Horse Camp, every kids dream right ? Well guess what, Horse Camp didn't quite measure up, let me tell you why.

To be perfectly honest I don't recall exactly how old I was when Horse Camp was pencilled in on the calendar. All I do recall is that my cousin and I were young and the thought of mounting a giant steed filled me with dread and uncertainty.

In my mothers defence, I probably nagged her until I was blue in the face to go to Horse Camp. I've always liked horses and I'm sure the idea of a week at Horse Camp seemed as exciting as the arrival of Santa Claus or a visit from the Tooth Fairy (twenty cents.......awright.....that's the biggest bag of mixed lollies in the entire world). Ah yes, selective memory loss, at the end of the day it may have all been mum's idea (I'm sure I'll be receiving an email shortly to fill in the blanks).

Anyway, on arrival at Horse Camp I was given a horse, who was probably the biggest horse to ever grace our fair shores. She was mammoth, gigantic, a Goliath amongst horses.......and I was a small, teeny, tiny, wee pip of a girl.

(Bare in mind I may be taking liberties with my story telling, and may also be embellishing a few minor facts, like actual sizes of animals and people)

My horse also had colic, which didn't really mean a great deal to me, aside from the fact that she had to wear a special collar (Prima Donna) and seemed especially crotchety (this may or may not have had anything to do with the colic). Turned out that not only was she a huge and colicky horse but she was also smart and took about a tenth of a second to realise she was a lot stronger then me, which clearly put her in charge.

Here is a simple fact. Small girl ; short legs - Big horse ; long legs, high body. Doesn't take a genius to work out that getting on and off the horse was going to be no small feat. It required either an adult, a box or a majestic gymnastics manoeuvre which no doubt would have scored straight tens at the Olympic Games.

Suffice to say, once I had manged to get on the horse it was paramount that I stayed put. Getting down and leaping back up again was not an option. Horse worked this out very early on, most likely around the same time that she worked out that my match-stick arms were unable to hold onto the reigns if she decided to stop and have some morning tea on the early trail ride.

So, horse chooses own direction, decides what she would like to eat, yanks reigns out of my hands and pretty much forgets she has a passenger on board. Yes, I was born to be a Horse-Woman.

As you might imagine, no sooner had horse learnt that I had no control over her whatsoever, I discovered that I much preferred to assist in the kitchen then go on the trail rides. Sorry mum, perhaps Cooking Camp might have been the way to go.

Those were the days.

Last night was my twenty year school reunion, which I did not attend. Before you start jumping to conclusions, I would have gone, but two States and a Tuesday 6.30pm time slot stood between me and the school gates. So I stayed home, watched Packed to the Rafters and drank sleepy-time tea, sorry, was it twenty years or fifty ? My memory seems to be failing me.

On the whole I have pretty fond memories of my time at school. I attended the same school for my entire education (can anyone see where the seed of my reluctance to break a routine may have been sown ?) and moved through various circles of friendships during the course of the thirteen years. A few of those friendships have withstood the test of time whilst others simply drifted away.

The twenty year reunion brought back memories of events which occurred during my school years and I thought I would share one of those with you today.

For want of a better title, let's call this one 'Lost'. Or perhaps 'Lost in the Bush,' or maybe even 'Lost in the Bush without Any Supplies for 12 Long, Cold Hours.' No, that will give the whole story away, let's go back to 'Lost.'

It was Grade Six camp and a gentle hike had been scheduled in. Now I don't know how long the hike was actually supposed to take, but I can safely assume that no one counted on twelve hours. Well, in all fairness, only two of us hiked for twelve hours, the others were all safely back at the camp, showering, eating dinner and no doubt telling dramatic tales of their own.

In our defense, it really could have happened to anyone. There was a teacher at the front of the group, introducing us to the finer points of 'power walking' and a teacher at the rear with a cattle dog herding up the stragglers (okay, I made that up, there was no cattle dog, but in hindsight, a cattle dog would have saved us all a lot of trouble).

Because I am an extremely kind soul, with the patience of a Saint (Coach, if you are reading this, please stop laughing immediately) I stopped to wait with Miss K who had picked an extremely poor moment to suffer the misfortune of an untied shoe lace.

That was all it took, when she was done and we looked around, we were alone. The front group had turbo charged onward and upward, the stragglers were probably fawning over a colourful display of mould on a fallen tree trunk, either that or chasing pixies.

Yes, we could have waited for the stragglers but we had seen which direction to take, so with the infinite wisdom of twelve long years on the planet, we followed. Or so we thought...........to be continued....