Speaker 1: Apogae Production. Welcome back to another episode of Am I
Speaker 1: A Bad Mum? Podcast? I don't know why we've just
Speaker 1: had school holidays, but I feel like it should be
Speaker 1: school holidays again. I don't know, I just feel like
Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks, like so much has like
Speaker 1: we've just hit a million miles an hour and now
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I need this.
Speaker 2: I keep forgetting what week it is right Like, I'm
Speaker 2: genuinely feeling like this term.
Speaker 3: Has kicked off really quickly.
Speaker 1: I feel like though, between you and I, we've got
Speaker 1: four kids. Yeah, minor in year ten high school, so
Speaker 1: we've done all of the primary school, we've done most
Speaker 1: of the high school, and I still couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: how many weeks are in a term.
Speaker 2: Google helps out with that sometimes in case you're like
Speaker 2: looking for that quick fix of like, shit, what date
Speaker 2: are they going to be home?
Speaker 3: That's the only way I survive.
Speaker 2: I've googled that several times this year within the term
Speaker 2: to work out what we were in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how lem I mean, it's probably in the newsletter
Speaker 1: that I read that it's not in Bullpoint.
Speaker 3: Can't sorry?
Speaker 1: Am I a Bad Mum? For forcing them to go
Speaker 1: absolutely not.
Speaker 3: It would have been necessary for sure.
Speaker 1: They went to school camp.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: As we know, my kids hate school camp. They have
Speaker 1: it two get at home. It's funny because all the
Speaker 1: kids to hate school camp.
Speaker 3: But I think it's the older they get.
Speaker 2: They don't like school camp because my two are the
Speaker 2: first ones on the bus and the last ones to
Speaker 2: get off.
Speaker 3: They genuinely love it.
Speaker 2: So I reckon it's older because the challenges get more,
Speaker 2: maybe like in depth for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well this particular one, so they went out to
Speaker 1: it's called Emu Gully. It's like out to Womba Way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the particular days that they went it was rainy
Speaker 1: and stormy and they they were sleeping in swags outside. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they're not allowed to take their phones, and there are
Speaker 1: kids that do take their phones, but I'm adamant. I'm like,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. The rules are you know, allowd your phone.
Speaker 1: First of all, I don't want you losing your phone. Secondly,
Speaker 1: I don't want you sat scrolling the whole night like
Speaker 1: you don't get any sleep anyway. And Thirdly, which I
Speaker 1: say thirdly it's kind of the first on the list,
Speaker 1: really is I don't want you constantly texting me about
Speaker 1: what a horrible time you're having. Actually don't want to know,
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to get that, like for a whole
Speaker 1: day when I pick you up, Yeah, gonna bitch and
Speaker 1: moan and tell me how horrible it is. So for
Speaker 1: these two days, I want to be able to just
Speaker 1: not hear about it.
Speaker 2: I just want to enjoy my time without you here
Speaker 2: whining about it. That would be the first reason for
Speaker 2: me too. Yeah, like the scrolling, Yes, that's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: They're gonna have a late night whatever.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to hear about how bad a
Speaker 3: time you're having.
Speaker 1: Come and pick me up. This happened. I'm so sad. Like,
Speaker 1: if I am not contactable, you'll just get on with
Speaker 1: things and you'll be fine. Yeah, and you'll cope with
Speaker 1: it all. But if I can be contacted, then you're
Speaker 1: gonna make sure that I feel shit about what you're
Speaker 1: going through. And actually I don't feel shit about what
Speaker 1: you're going through because I think it's resilient.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's so good for them. So what did they
Speaker 3: get up to?
Speaker 1: So they had to sleep in the swags and that
Speaker 1: first night was pissing down with rain, and then there
Speaker 1: was like thunder problems, thunder thunderstorms. Yeah, in my mind,
Speaker 1: I was like, surely they've had to hate them inside
Speaker 1: and they're sleeping in the cabins or something. Yet surely no,
Speaker 1: it slept out in the storm in swags. I said,
Speaker 1: what'd you do with your stuff? Because these swags are.
Speaker 3: Like just you are they waterproof?
Speaker 1: Obously, they definitely got wet, you know, those really tiny
Speaker 1: one man tents were literally and they said, Mum, it's
Speaker 1: so castrophobic, like being in a coffin because they're just
Speaker 1: bags and stuff outside in the rain. So all their
Speaker 1: stuff just got wet. And then what they had to
Speaker 1: do is so they were learning all about when I
Speaker 1: laughed last year saying that when they got in the
Speaker 1: car after school camp, it looked like they'd come back
Speaker 1: from war. Literally they were teaching them about ANZACs and
Speaker 1: like one of the activities was they had one kid
Speaker 1: who turned out to be Amelia was chosen to lay
Speaker 1: on a stretcher. She was pretending to be an injured
Speaker 1: soldier and the other the group had to carry her.
Speaker 1: But they had to go through trenches like mud water
Speaker 1: at one point that were up to their necks in
Speaker 1: water like holding up the Oh my gosh, it's so good,
Speaker 1: stretcher above them mud everywhere.
Speaker 2: Amelia would have loved that, because she wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: She's fine, she's light.
Speaker 1: Lady, and all the others are like swamping through the mud.
Speaker 1: Holly looked at me when I picked her up and
Speaker 1: she was telling me about what she had to do.
Speaker 1: She went, Mum, we had to be barefoot. They were
Speaker 1: barefoot in the mud. I looked at the pictures. I
Speaker 1: had a look at the website, and they were showing
Speaker 1: me each different part that they did. I said, what
Speaker 1: if there was like something in there, like when I
Speaker 1: say something like an animal like? I said, was there
Speaker 1: anything in there? She went, I don't know. I didn't
Speaker 1: even want to think about it. It's like swamp water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they would have been eels in there for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I thought snakes like they were in their
Speaker 1: bare foot and there's like.
Speaker 3: I'll deal with it. Their first aid trained.
Speaker 2: They know how to put on like a compression depression
Speaker 2: bandage to stop the poison going up their leg.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, steels are harmless. They don't go for you.
Speaker 2: They just slither between your toes and around your ankles and.
Speaker 1: Even washing their clothes. When they got back great, they
Speaker 1: had like this bin bag full of like the wet,
Speaker 1: muddy stuff. I took those like pants out and then
Speaker 1: like put my arm into it was inside out, put
Speaker 1: my arm in to turn it the right way round.
Speaker 1: And just the feel of that on my hand, of
Speaker 1: the mud and the cold and the wet, I was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, it's horrible. And then they had to
Speaker 1: swim in the creek to get the mud off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was cold, that'll be fine. Oh. There was the
Speaker 1: funniest thing, mum. The shower was a bucket and we
Speaker 1: had to keep filling up the bucket and that's how
Speaker 1: we showered outside. And the toilet was also a bucket.
Speaker 1: It was a Bunnings bucket outside. They had to squat
Speaker 1: over the bucket. I said, did you go for like
Speaker 1: a number two at all?
Speaker 3: They were like no, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: They said, when you go to the toilet, you're winging
Speaker 1: over someone else's poop.
Speaker 3: Who empty is a bucket?
Speaker 1: I don't know what. They had to cook their own dinner?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what were they cooking? Did you have to pack
Speaker 3: food and stuff for them? No, but they just had
Speaker 3: to cook it.
Speaker 1: They had to cook it okay. I feel like there
Speaker 1: was a lot of resilience. But you know, the one
Speaker 1: thing that I was really interested in is that they
Speaker 1: had the option not to do those activities because it
Speaker 1: was all about not forcing people to do what they
Speaker 1: don't want to do, which you know, this is a
Speaker 1: controversial top topic. I know how we feel about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, back in the day, suck it up, princess,
Speaker 1: just get on do it. Yeah, you weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: have an option of not doing it because you didn't
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 2: What was the ratio of people that chose not to
Speaker 2: do it then the ones that did choose to do it?
Speaker 3: Was it huge?
Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, I feel like it was. They
Speaker 1: said there were so many people that chose not to
Speaker 1: do it, like fifty to fifty. I said to Holly,
Speaker 1: but you chose to do it. She went, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we were all working as a team and if I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, help out. There had to be a certain
Speaker 1: amount of people to carry the stretcher. And she said,
Speaker 1: if I didn't do it, she said, Mum, for the
Speaker 1: first time ever, I like really didn't put myself first.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about everybody else. I was like, good,
Speaker 1: I knew this is resilience. Now next day, my friend,
Speaker 1: you will be back at camp.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's really good to hear, and especially in those moments,
Speaker 2: you sort of have that like as much as they
Speaker 2: bitch and moan about doing it, they did it. They
Speaker 2: could have bitched and moaned and then got there and
Speaker 2: then chose not to participate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they didn't. They got in and they were like,
Speaker 3: let's do it. This is a team. And I love that.
Speaker 2: I love that it actually means that whatever you're teaching
Speaker 2: them at home, it's sticking, much as they don't want
Speaker 2: to admit it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw the teachers getting off the bus with Gracie's grade,
Speaker 2: which is like grade six.
Speaker 3: Now, these poor teachers.
Speaker 2: Look like they had been at war, and like one
Speaker 2: of them she goes, I have not slept for four nights,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I get it. I mean, like
Speaker 2: I don't get it because I'm not a school teacher
Speaker 2: and i haven't been away with that many kids, which
Speaker 2: was just like poor things. She was like, she ended
Speaker 2: up having like three days off from work because she
Speaker 2: was exhausted.
Speaker 1: And do you know what, honestly, Rach, the preparation for
Speaker 1: this camp and the packing list and the stuff I
Speaker 1: had to buy. Yeah, I went to Kmart. I got
Speaker 1: cheap everything, including like runners to get wet and muddy.
Speaker 1: Cheapest came out ones. I spent four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: dollars for two nights, so I got to camp. I
Speaker 1: could have got a five star hotel for that.
Speaker 2: That is not going to teach them anything, But how
Speaker 2: was your five star hotels?
Speaker 1: It was really good free time away. And just as
Speaker 1: we dropped the kids off, Amelia turned to me and went,
Speaker 1: enjoy your five star hotel. And I could see in
Speaker 1: her mind she didn't say it, but she may as
Speaker 1: well have gone, enjoy your five star hotel. You fuck it,
Speaker 1: then slam the door and off she goes to camp.
Speaker 1: By Darling, see you in a few days.