ON SHIFTING SANDSHOES – an in tents experience
1988
ISBN: 9780648599845
Every year a group of friends go camping on North Stradbroke Island (Mingerriba), an idyllic paradise only twenty kilometres off the the Queensland coast near Brisbane. Every year from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve they have a fabulous time, cavorting in the surf, playing bastard ball, eating, drinking and celebrating another year gone. However, in 1988, the year of Australia’s Bicentennial, they encounter a massive cyclone which not only wrecks and floods their campsite but soon sees them cut off from civilization and, incredibly, virtually running out of food. As things go from bad to worse and hunger turns to starvation prior deceptions and misdemeanors are revealed, new passions are ignited and relationships rapidly fall apart. Even magic mushrooms are mistakenly eaten causing more chaos. At the climax of their descent into madness a rare and endangered local marsupial is destroyed. At which point, the storm seems to abate. But by the end of the holiday week they leave the debris of their campsite knowing full well that such a reunion will never happen again.