We're Just Not People Persons

Yesterday was a superb late winter day, cool with a sunny blue sky, so Boof, Funky and I loaded up the 4WD and headed to the Watagan Mountains for a picnic.

After scouting a couple of locations, we settled on an empty picnic ground at a lookout, with a stunning view of Lake Macquarie, and settled down to tuck into our tabouleh and blood orange vodkas. The peace and quiet lasted for about three minutes, then the 4WDs started arriving.

In the space of a few minutes, they pulled into the carpark, one after another after another, until there must have been about 30 of them. And these were real 4WDs, workhorses with bullbars and double mud flaps and (gasp!) gun racks, not the delicate little gold-coloured thing we arrived in.

Soon the occupants of the vehicles spilled out. They were mostly dressed in...camouflage gear. "Oh dear," I said quietly, "You know what people like that want to do to people like us."

But strangely, they didn't start cooking a BBQ, or shooting lefties and poofs, or even passing a footy around. They left their vehicles, wandered around the grounds for a few minutes, then all got back in and drove off. Obviously they were some kind of 4WD club, but I'm not sure what they were doing - on a lookout crawl perhaps? Or maybe we scared them off?

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