‘Cars, camping and Shakespeare made Uncle Don my favourite’

Uncle Don was one of my favourite uncles. Mainly because he had a passion for cars … veteran cars. At the age of 12 I had a ride in his electric car. Much later, I learned that even Henry Ford’s wife preferred her electric car. Much easier to drive than Henry’s cranky old Fords.

Uncle Don had two other passions: camping and going to Shakespearean plays. He was widely read in Shakespeare as he used to belong to one of the local Shakespearean performing groups. I was with him one day when he was contemplating the purchase of a very old Talbot.

“Hmm,” he mused. “To buy or not to buy …”

It was not until I reached my later secondary school years I realised he was quoting — or rather cleverly misquoting — Hamlet’s soliloquy.

Camping, he once told me, is loitering within tent. That went straight over my head. The pun, not the tent.

Though camping is generally regarded as a summer pastime, he used to go camping in the winter. Yes he was eccentric.

“Much cheaper and not so crowded,” he would say when people wondered about wintry tenting.

One day he turned up at our house with something in a large bag.

“Look what I’ve got,” he said. He pulled open the drawstrings of the bag. Inside was a canvas tent. “I got it at disposal store, for a song.”

“What did you sing?” I asked. I hadn’t heard of that expression before.

“It means I got it really cheap, at a discount,” he said.

Then he asked if anyone in our family would like to go camping with him. None of my brothers was keen to camp in the winter time, but I had never been camping before so I volunteered.

The following Friday night saw both of us motoring down the Princess Highway towards Mogo on the south coast of New South Wales. We soon found a grassy slope just outside the village and in about 30 minutes the tent was set up. We had fold up beds, a small canvas table and a kerosene lamp. No heating, so we were both rugged up.

It was getting late so we climbed into our sleeping bags and were soon sound asleep. It was literally sound because Uncle Don snored loudly.

The next sound we heard was not until about 3am. Flashes of lightning, followed by barrel rolling thunder. The tent began to leak but that was not the only problem. Our camping site was in the way of a small depression and the rain water formed a tiny rivulet running right through our tent.

Uncle Don switched on his torch, surveyed the dripping disaster, then said rather lugubriously, “Now is the winter of our discount tent.”

Yes, Shakespeare again!