Celebrity Camper – The McClymonts

With nine Golden Guitars and two ARIA Awards under their belts, The McClymonts are one of the most popular country music groups in Australia.  Although life in the spotlight is fun, the sisters do like to escape from it all now and then.

For Mollie, Sam and Brooke, camping has always been a part of their lives.

Originally from Grafton, the talented trio have been on tour recently promoting their fourth album, “Here’s To You and I”.

We caught up the Mollie to chat about the McClymont’s past and present camping habits and their favourite escapes.

 1. Where did you go for camping holidays when you were young?

We used to always go to a beautiful little town called Iluka, 40 minutes north of our hometown of Grafton. It was always about family time, it’s where mum and dad used to take us. I don’t think we ever actually travelled with anyone else. Dad used to work a lot so it was a convenient spot to get away to. Iluka was, and still is, very tiny, so there were no fancy restaurants – it was family barbeques every night. We used to go swimming at the beach, ghost crabbing with dad at night, and generally just hang out. Camping trips were a chance for our family to just spend time together.

2. What was your favourite place to camp and why?

Iluka was always a family favourite. It has the beach on one side and the river on the other. Up on Iluka Bluff the views are absolutely gorgeous. Nymboida was another amazing place to go, but we only went there once. The Nymboida River is stunning; we rented tubes and just floated down the rapids. It rained the whole time we were there, but there was so much to see and do, we didn’t care about the weather.

3. Did you camp in a caravan or a tent?

We did both, with every holiday came a different adventure. When I was younger I used to love staying in a tent because it was an adventure, but the older I got the less attractive the tent became. I probably preferred the caravan later on, but my favourite memories were definitely staying in the tent. There was something really fun about having to do everything from scratch, like set up the kitchen.

4. Tell us about some of your favourite camping memories.

Every camping memory involves fishing with dad. I love that we would sit there for hours and just chat and on the odd occasion reel in a fish. He taught me how to bait up, cast out and reel one in. I think because dad worked all the time, we only had summer holidays when we could go away because all the weekends were taken up with us singing. Poor dad didn’t get a fish because he was constantly baiting my sisters and I up with worms and prawns. It was just our thing we did together.

Link: Read the full interview in Issue 15 of Time to Roam