Descriptive Essay: The Cold War

We stopped at an overnight rest area 40 kilometres past Longreach and set up camp for the stormy night to come. While we were waiting for dinner to be cooked a few of us stood around the fire watching the huge black clouds rumbling in. Blinding, flashing, terrifying bolts of light dancing across the sky like a frenzy of fish. Lightning. The whole sky lights up and for a few brief moments it appears day.

Chloe was bunking with me. We had set up my swag under a tarp next to the tin shelter. There was a trench dividing the tarp in two. We hopped into bed while everyone else stayed up talking. Chloe and I drifted into a deep sleep almost immediately.

I woke up suddenly when Reuben screamed “The water”! I unzipped my swag and saw that the rain had filled up the trench and it was overflowing into everyone’s swags. I put on my shoes to get the shovel out of the trailer to clear out the trench.

“Nah I’m going back to bed, it’s too cold out here,” was his reply as he took off his shoes. It started raining even heavier and I knew I had to hurry or everyone would be soaked. I ran to the trailer and opened it so hard that it fell off its hinges.

I grabbed the shovel and walked back across the lake of mud, falling into many mud puddles up to my thighs and tripping over swags, coating them in mud. As soon I got back I started digging. Reuben was meant to be shining the torch so I could see what I was doing but he was more interested in a bug floating down the trench so I accidentally put the mud I was digging out of the trench on top of Felix’s swag.

After half an hour of digging and scooping out water I could finally go back to bed. Reuben was going to wake me up every hour to dig again so I tried to get as much sleep as I