Annual is a 10 day camp with 5 days of hiking and is one of the main reason why you should join cadets. Heaps of fun, especially with lots of friends.
We left on a Thursday, at 7:00 which wasn't that early and boarded the bus with our massive shitloads of packs and whatnot. Bus trip was mostly uneventful. I spent most of the time reading and playing poker on Raymond's mobile. We did have a stop at a service station and I bought pancakes at Hungry Jacks. I got ripped off because I only got two pancakes while everyone else got three so I tried to compensate by taking a lot of their sugar packets.
We stopped at someplace and I got ripped off again, buying a chicken sandwich for $4.50. Oops.
When we got to the barracks, we got into our rooms, which was pretty cool because we got individual rooms. The first thing we did was PT where we did some warm-ups then this pretty fun obstacle course. That was pretty cool except my arms felt like they would fall off at the monkey bars and I was surprised at how hard it was to dive through a hoop.
Food there was great. I can't really remember what we did at night, but I remember four guys on a bed and talking to Dennis until 12. We had this weapons simulation thing the next day, which was sort of fun. The guy teaching me how to use a gun was sorta weird and told me to treat the gun like a girl. Most of us got a fail except for a few pro people and the seniors and officers.
Afterwards we stayed at Mt Beauty. We found a supermarket and I got instant noodles because I forgot to pack them for the trek. We also borrowed Blade at the movie rental store and watched it aftewards. It was a pretty awesome movie if you're into exploding vampires, crazy action, over-the-top special effects and general badassness. I spent the night playing lots of Tap Defense and got to level 31, which Raymond still can't beat. :D
The trek started the next day and after less than an hour of walking, we reached this waist deep river we couldnt cross so we took another trail to this area with vehicle area and had lunch there. Afterwards, this guy that was walking with us drove us all in groups of four to one of our overnight destinations, Cope hut. That took absolutely aaaages because it was a one and a quarter hour drive there and back and there were around 18 of us. We got really cold in the rain and wind and were really thankful that the hut had a fire.
The next four days were pretty normal. The scenery was quite nice if repetitive. Pretty much this sorta terrain the whole time. I realised that it wasn't so cold if I wore a jumper and rain protection and that made life a lot more comfortable. To pass the time we played Uno and poker a lot. I actually didn't argue with Vincent Tran that much and we didn't have a single argument in the morning about who got out of the tent first.
Conversation hits really desperate lows while camping. You often find yourself discussing stuff like which campsite has the best pit toilets and how many times you've taken a dump in the past few days. Fascinating stuff.
Having said that funny stuff does happen. Arthur somehow burnt his jumper while cooking something and countless people dropped cups of boiling water.
At some point we were talking about buying a roast chicken when we got back to civilisation and Arthur said "Fuck the chicken." So from now on we call Arthur a chicken fucker.
Oh yeah and there was this place called Mt. Niggerhead. Haha that's funny.
The last day of the trek was extremely easy. We walked for less than two hours I think. The river that got the other sections soaked to about crotch height turned out to be a tiny little creek because of the fine weather for two of the days.
Once back at Mt Beauty, we did a lot of stuff. We made lots of nachos, rented Blade 2 and 3 and made pasta. Blade is probably the most badass character ever. Which is probably why the third Blade isn't as awesome as the first two, because he doesn't kick as much ass.
After Mt Beauty, we stayed at the Canberra Carotel. The same place we stayed at for Canberra camp. We spent time at the War Memorial and at the civic centre. Back at the carotel, we played a lot of poker with Uno cards as chips and played volleyball.
At night we all cracked up and couldn't stop laughing for some reason. The whole room was really high.
The next day we had lunch at Chinatown and we went to this Korean place (v. expensive) and ate the barbeque stuff.
At the carotel again, we swam and afterwards had a talent quest, which was compulsory. I was part of this monkey show where we all acted like monkeys and did stuff like monkey tetris where we tesselated. :)
At night, we made jesus juice, which was black coffee with a lot of sugar. We tried to get high again but it didn't work so we played poker again.
We took the bus back the next day and I finally finished the book I was reading. Once again, that was pretty uneventful but at least I didn't get ripped off on the way back.
That was annual. I'll upload photos if I ever get them.
