✔️Soundtrack to My Youth (18+)

My Hero

"We're not going to use half this stuff" I yelled out to Dad, surveying the back of his 1970's, pristine condition, Toyota four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser that we were taking on a road trip up to Tamworth. The back of the car was almost filled with two large containers of water, an empty petrol drum, rope, two large tents and enough camping gear that we could open a camping store, a cooler filled with water, beer, girlish drinks (as Dad called them, they were really premixed vodka and raspberries for me) and soft drinks. Dad came up beside me, taking my suitcase from my hands and placing it in the back of the car next to his own and Bridget's.

"You never know what might happen so you've gotta be prepared for every situation" Dad, the former boy scout, explained. "From the weight of your suitcase I'm guessing you didn't need half the stuff you packed either but you still threw it in." Touché.

Dad had travelled around the country in his four-wheel-drive, long before Bridget and I were born, he would often tell us stories about when he travelled inland the countryside would stretch on for miles and miles with nothing around, so if you broke down there'd be no-one around to come help. 

Bridget had already taken her spot in the passenger seat, her earphones on as she blasted music from her Disc-man and furiously pressed buttons on her Gameboy, most likely playing her new Donkey Kong game that she bought the week before. 

Dad's car didn't have a CD player, or even a tape deck. It had a small stereo that only played AM radio, which suited Dad because he loved to listen to talk back but, for Bridget and I, it meant we had to always bring our own entertainment or else we'd be stuck listening to old biddies who loved to call up the radio station to complain about how 'the youth of today have no damn respect'.

I took my seat behind Bridget, admiring how the two decade interior looked almost brand new, all credit to Dad and his meticulous upkeep of cleaning, putting my own car, which was littered with empty bottles and food wrappers, to shame.

Dad closed up the back of the car and then climbed into the drivers side, taking one look at Bridget, he shook his head and laughed, knowing she was now in full travel mode, there'd be no conversation out of her unless she needed to stop to use a bathroom or if she was hungry. He then looked back at me and smiled.

"Alright pumpkin, we'll pick up Sam and then head out onto the highway." Dad was excited, I could hear it in his tone, he loved camping but, being the father of two girls who hated the outdoors meant he usually had to go away with friends or find a solution that suited all three of us, usually settling for a cabin within a caravan park so that Bridget and I would have electricity, television, comfy beds and hot, running water and he would still have his great outdoors to walk around in every morning but this time we had decided that it was time we gave him what he truely wanted, sleeping in sleeping bags on blow up mattresses in tents, boiling water on a campfire stove, eating food cooked on a BBQ, using communal showers and toilets and spending a solid four days of pretending that everything in the woods doesn't want to eat us.

Dad had been the one who suggested that Sam come with us, because, as he explained 'listening to you two girls complain about everything is made more fun for me if I have someone to share it with'. He also knew that Sam's Dad was working all long weekend and didn't want Sam to be alone over Easter, or as Dad liked to call it 'Chocolate Egg Day'.

Arriving at Sam's I was surprised to see him waiting out front with an overnight bag, sleeping bag and another small bag in his hands. He threw his overnight and sleeping bags into the back of the car but kept the smaller bag with him, making me curious of its contents.

"Morning" He greeted all of us, Dad and I replied and Bridget just gave him a silent wave from the front seat.

"What's in the bag?" I asked him, he had placed the bag between his legs, almost like he was trying to hide it from view.