Well, here we are at Emu Park. All set up and taking advantage of their pay for three and stay four nights. Lovely big site that fits the car and trailer.
This caravan park has special meaning for me. It is where my journey to camp oven cooking began 50 years ago.
Was camping here and came across a woman cooking in what I thought was a big tin with a lid that turned out to be a
Bedourie Spun Steel camp oven. She was roasting a chicken using coals from the wood fired barbecue.
Got talking to her and she lent me her copy of Jack Absalom’s book, Outback Cooking in a Camp Oven. I sat and read it from cover to cover and was absolutely amazed that you could cook anything in a camp oven using coals from the fire.
On our return I bought a
Bedourie Camp Oven as well as Jack’s book. I started cooking just about everything and our meals while camping changed.
My collecting of camp ovens of all types started, I wrote articles for magazines on camp oven cooking, started a website as there wasn’t anything on the internet back then. I got involved in camp oven cooking cooking demonstrations and even featured in 13 episodes of a TV program cooking in my camp ovens.
I started this online
forum that has literally thousands of recipes for outdoor cooking and I believe we have all proved on here that what I thought back 50 years ago is that yes, you can cook anything in a camp oven.
Now today I am back where it all started and am feeling quite nostalgic.