Spear in da nose
We’ve been living on a campsite since later December. It’s pretty sweet as far as campsites go, but camping is never easy at the best of times. We have all mod cons like warm shower, clean toilets and even Internet, but we’ve had a few drawbacks. Like ALL our food being robbed out the fridge, waking up at 4am when the assholes next to us arrive home, waking twice in 1 night with a possum, bandikoot or jumping rat or something trying to rob our food.
Seems my run of luck getting ripped off is set to continue…
We bought a 2nd hand tent from this really nice Mebourne couple who were on holiday in Sydney over Christmas. Everyone had told us that tents were really expensive, so we were searching high and low for a 2nd hand tent and this seemed like a great solutions. They wouldn’t have to take their tent down at 5am the next morning and
we wouldn’t have to put our new tent up either.
So we gave ‘em $150 (75 euro) and we had a beautiful new home.
As a part of the deal, we also got 2 free fold away chairs worth($50) and a combi-table 4 chair set that packs away into a suitcase (worth $100). We also got a “REALLY GOOD TARP” (his words, not mine …. being Irish, I have no idea what a tarp is for, let alone, what constitutes a good one) – worth *shrug* $50. They had also paid for 2 extra days on their site, so got that for free (worth $70).
It only took a day for it to become apparent that all was not well in the health of our new housing friend…
It seemed that the main pole was snapped and had been for some time. In fact it had been really well wrapped in masking tape to hold the thing in place at all….
SHHIITTTT!!!
It seems this type of tent (Spinifex) is only sold by 1 chain of shops in Australia (Anaconda). The nearest Anaconda is pretty hard to get to from where we live, when you don’t have a car. I spoke the manger and he assured me the would be able to us a replacement pole, no problem.
So we went in there and the guy was like, hey I could have sold you a new tent for $150 dollars. I thought, shut you ****ing pie hole. “Wow, really” I said.
He ended up feeling so sorry for us and sickened to the core of his being that someone could rip off some poor, cash strapped backpackers that he sold us $300 tent for $75 (I hope his boss isn’t reading this…. sorry Cleatus!!!)
Anyway, so now we have 2 tents and all the apparel, mentioned above. Now bearing in mind we wouldn’t have got the tent at the price if we hadn’t first bought the broken tent we’ll look at the math:
OUTGOINGS
Broken Tent - 150
New tent – 75
Total outgoings – 225
ASSETS / Value
Broken Tent – $150
Fold away chairs – $50
Foldaway table chairs – $100
Tarp – $50
Campsite – $70
Total Assets – $420
Now as Paddy will tell you, I’m no accountant, but it looks to me that we’re $195 in the good out of all this….
I won’t here anything else about it…
James and Celine 1, Australia 0!!! In your face Australia!!!!
That’ll have to go against the car rental of getting us off this campsite with all this shit, if that day ever comes.
