A camping holiday and ACOTS in Canberra

Last night I returned from Canberra after another successful ACOTS Convention. My daughter Alexandra and I spent some days sightseeing and camping along the NSW coast at Eden and Mimosa Rocks National Park. As well as its lovely beach and national park Eden has a whale museum dedicated to Tom thhe killer whale who, with his other killer whale friends, helped the early local whale hunters to catch the bigger sperm whales. They actually pulled the boats out with their teeth grasping the ropes. When a whaler fell overboard the killer whales circled, apparently keeping sharks away until the man could be rescued. They also showed the spot where some children had drowned.  There were many interesting stories, including that of a whaler who was swallowed by a sperm whale, was inside it for fifteen hours and survived, until rescued by other whale hunters; he was unconscious, his hair had turned white by the digestive juices but he survived and lived another fifteen years.           
After enjoying swimming at the the beach but enduring two very cold nights in the tent we moved up the coast to Bega and beyond and then had a look at a waterfall. Alexandra fell off a log and, with the help of another man, I carried her back to the car. A lady nurse happened to be there too and announced that Alexandra had no broken bones but that we had better have her checked at hospital, so back to Bega we went. Fortunately she was just bruised and sore. We then had to drive to our next destination, Mimosa, and set up camp in the dark. An old German camper lent me an additional lamp and next day showed us the beautiful sketch books that he and his recently deceased wife had kept of the local nature. We also had the company, at night, of a possum who wanted our baked potato scraps. It even let us stroke its fur.

After two nights at Mimosa we drove to Bateman's Bay and turned inland to Canberra and drove up a very windy, steep road with plenty of hairpin bends. We arrived at Canberra and got lost for an hour and a half before finding our camping ground and eventualy meeting our NSW, Victorian and South Australian friends who were staying in cabins. I have to say that by staying in a tent Alexandra and I learnt just how cold the next three Canberra nights could be.

The organiser of the ACOTS convention this time was Chris Goddard, a curator at the Canberra War Museum. We later saw his very varied , quirky and fascinating collection of toy soldiers, civilians and other toys. Friday was our swapmeet day in a local hall. This swapmeet was by invitation so we did not have huge numbers of customers but plenty of earnest swapping and buying between the happy few. One table featured a very large collection of old hollowcast, plastics and collectable books from the owner's deceased father. Hollowcast and more recent metal figures sold for about five dollars each. I bought a number of these and some mounted Britains hussars and lancers for ten dollars each; admittedly they were in slightly rough condition but this will give me an excuse to restore and improve them. I also bought some mounted Herald/Britains cowboys and Indians in excellent condition for ten dollars each. From Bob Bolton of Adelaide I bought a large swag of Britains Detail ACW riders. From Alan Copsey of Melbourne I obtained a large number of Britains plastic horses in exchange for some of my painted AIP Zulus. There were a number of other varied additions to my collection.

As Chris is not a wargamer others supplied the wargame figures. David Palmer of Gisborne, near Melbourne supplied the bulk of them , and, with Paul and Steve Wardle, umpired the games on Saturday. I privided a couple of units of barbarians to go with the rest of the armies. His Supreme pllayset Greeks looked very effective when based and grouped together. The Barbarians/Carthaginians had war elephants and a bigger army whilst the Romans had better discipline and armour. Each unit had to be 'activated' to do anything, with further activation rolls to enable charges. In each move the player also rolled to determine what number of extra activation dice could be allocated to crucial units.

The other games were a 'first' for ACOTS as they involved the use of 25mm Seven Years War figures. Our games, for twentyfive years have always been 54mm but because all figures had to be transported to Canberra David opted to include the small scale. Both scale games were enjoyable, although I had to look more closely at the smaller figures to determine their regiments.
On Saturday night we had our usual night out at a restaurant and determined where our next Easter convention will be. Brian Wagstaff of Adelaide will be organising it but in another 'first' we shall be combining our event with a wargamers association. This will widen the customer base for our stalls and hopefully enable us to convert others to 54mm.

On Sunday we explored the Canberra Trash and Treasure markets and picked up a number of Games Work shop figures. We also had a guided tour, from Chris, of the Canberra War memorial. I took a number of pictures of the WW1 uniforms and weapons. I shall be posting some pictures later in the week.