Camp Heavy Metal

*Vans Warped Tour, California, US, 2016:

Ern: “We’re getting too old for this.”

Daph: “Never again.”

*Monsters of Rock Festival. Donington, UK, 2017:

Ern: “We’re getting too old for this.”

Daph: “Never again.”

*Unify Heavy Metal Gathering, Victoria, Australia, 2018:

Ern: “We’re getting too old for this.”

Daph: “Never again.”

Despite saying “never again” several times, tonight we are sleeping in a cardboard tent surrounded by eight thousand drunken metal-heads. Daphne thinks that the penguin parade pandemonium wasn’t that bad.

Quote of the day:

Ern: “You know you’re too old for heavy metal festivals when most of the patches on your jacket are older than everyone here.”

***

After spending one night in a cardboard tent, Daph and Ern decided to break the rules and escape the confines of Camp Heavy Metal to find solace in the Kombi, parked in the festival car park. Whilst the festival kids were playing beer pong for breakfast, Daph and Ern ate hot cross buns, drank tea, played Monopoly, and “nanna napped” until the bands we wanted to see came onstage... at 00:45 a.m.!

All in all, it was a pleasant day.

Daph: “We had a lovely time. Do you think we will do a festival again?”

Ern throws his head back and lets out a hearty laugh. In his mind, he remembers how bad the toilets were, how annoying the loud music until 5.00 a.m. was when he was trying to sleep, how worried he was that the roof of their cardboard tent was going to collapse in the torrential rain, how cold they were in the driving rain (under one dollar ponchos while the drunken kids paraded around half naked, feeling no pain through the excesses of alcohol intake), and how old we felt when the kids said things like “dope ride” as we drove past in the Kombi.

Daph: “That’s a no then?”

Now, as greasy and smelly as all the other kids, but minus the hangover, we are setting off for Sorrento Pier to take the Kombi on her first ferry ride over to start the Great Ocean Road.