Elliot Heads our first destination, a small tight campground packed to the gunnels. We arrived in time for the European Football Cup final and the Australian State of Origin NRL(National Rugby League), both on during our stay.
We had been promised a big screen event for the European Football Cup Final, and if successful, a repeat for the State of Origin. Fellow traveler we will call him Chris, most famous for his ability to fix a deal and his London accent, had bought a device to project a television signal onto a large screen. He had the device and the screen. We thought it would be a fabulous, we just needed a place to set up, the awning of one our vans would work, but didn’t quite have the right ambiance. Another of our number, Sue solved the problem. I am not sure what story she spun, but she got us into the Camp Kitchen. The manager of the caravan park thought it was a great idea and wanted to put signs up all around the campgrounds.
I felt cold shivers go through my bones. I’ve been here before, all the expectation and then not able to deliver. We needed a dry run at least. We started by visiting the camp kitchen. This large modern complex boasted Audio Visual points for setting up conference style multi media appeared perfect. The cup was to be played on a Monday morning early. How early you say, very early we would need to be organised and setup in the kitchen about 4 am. There had been a trial of this equipment in Chris’s home patio. Fantastic, this was going to be a good morning. If the manager of the park put his signs up around the park letting people know, we mused, the ladies would make bacon and egg rolls and sell them to the attending punters.
Just as we were getting a good head of steam up, we cased the venue one more time to see exactly how to set up things. Last time we visited was during the day, now its evening and one highlight prominent in this camp kitchen, was its abundant lighting, it was brighter than day, the Audio Visual points weren’t helpful as the HDMI output for the wall plugs was up four meters above our head. Our tallest bloke, Bob, was 2 meters tall, add his outstretched arms. He wouldn’t get anywhere near the ceiling. So we would need to plug directly into the projector with the laptop. The lights wouldn’t dim, so the big screen wouldn’t work. We would need to provide everything to set up and nobody had any rolls to make bacon and eggs rolls. This doesn’t smell good.
On a trial run back at the Chris’s awning, the laptop lid broke and so you need to carry it around open and any adjustment of the laptop lid would prove fatal for the device. The Sunday night before the evening was cold, icy cold, cold that bites at your freezing bones. We were going to need to get up and freeze in this cold to watch a game we only had a passing interest in. Fortunately, the manager didn’t put his signs up and we realized we didn’t need to see the sodding game after all we were only doing this to support Chris. The venture was flagged as too difficult and Chris ended up seeing the last twenty minutes of the game huddled up against the cold in his awning while we slept.
State of Origin was an evening game, and we all piled into Bob and Sues caravan and watched a fantastic game where our state of Queensland won.