My nephew gave me a call on the weekend which was a nice surprise for me as he lives in Australia and I have not seen him since Xmas 2001 – in that time he has turned twenty-one, got engaged, gotten married…really grown up, though I still see him as the quite teenage boy he was when I last saw him. He has a very tight little circle of friends who spend a lot of time at the little flat he and his new wife purchased last year, they go out to dinner each week and have known each other since high school.Now they are all going camping together, in a couple of fancy hire-caravans, complete with awnings, satellite and tv’s, bikes on racks and supposedly a portable jacuzzi…which sounds a bit complicated to me. They intend to drive through outback Queensland and up to Darwin…I think they are mad.

I told him to think this trip over very carefully because I knew some people who never recovered from such a holiday. My uncle, aunt and a couple – their best friends of 37 years -  took a trip in a caravan to Alice Springs over a period of five weeks. I wont go into the sad details but suffice to say the couple decided to fly themselves home after two weeks away and my uncle and aunt returned from the trip and vowed never to see or speak to their former best friends ever again. Being crammed into a confined space with even your closest buddies can test tolerance and friendships. And what caused the end of such a beautiful friendship…? they had argued over how to light a BBQ…