Week #12 and Weekend #13: Adelaide and Sexy Tents

This post is about dancing, preparing food and damn sexy tents... Actually it's mostly going to be about the sexy tents. I've written about preparing food and dancing before and there's not much to say there that wouldn't be a repetition of the old.

Early last week, I took delivery of a box from the US. Significantly sooner than the predicted 7 days, my tent had arrived. I resisted the urge to set it up, instead packing it away for use when next I found myself camping. When oh when would this be?

Friday, as it turned out, after a few days of cooking and dehydrating.

One of my habits, which I shall write more about another time, is journeying to small towns in Tassie or across the seas to the distant "mainland" for a few days. Almost without fail, it's because the town is playing host to a festival. I'll turn up with a complement of kilts replacing my pack's normal contents of wet weather gear, pitch a tent and spend a few days dancing until my feet hurt and listening to music.

This weekend's town of choice was Willunga, a couple of hours' train and bus ride south of Adelaide. I swapped my weight vest for a pack and toted it across kraken-infested waters to reach South Australia. A while spent exploring the city (my travels had never taken me to the state before), some time on public transport and I was faced with a patch of empty grass. This seemed in dire need of filling, and it was time for the tent to make its appearance. It was pretty quick to set up once I'd figured out what was what. Once it was set, there was really only one description that seemed appropriate: Sexy... That's right, the Jannu is a damned sexy tent.

Let me start with the fabric. It feels like it'll tear if you glare at it because it's so ridiculously thin and light. But it doesn't. Actually, it's one of the tougher tent fabrics around. It doesn't feel like it can stop a gentle summers breeze though, certainly not storms!

The tent poles are on the outside of the tent, which perplexed me until I worked out that this serves as an extra frame to allow the rather clever ventilation system in the roof. I love that ventilation system! If you're familiar with venturi pumps, it's essentially one of them designed to work with wind striking the tent in any direction (also, apologies for the horribly crude diagram I'm about to attach). If you're not familiar with a venturi pump, please refer to my amazingly brilliant diagram. The ventilation opening in the top of the fly can be adjusted from inside the main tent without even stirring from your sleeping bag.

OK, moving right along.

It's a few details that really made the tent. While setting it up, I kept stopping and looking at what I was doing because I would realise that some tiny detail that annoyed me on other tents had been fixed on this one. The pegs have a loop of cord on the end of each one. Those fancy new extruded alloy pegs, so easy to put in and without the tendency to bend on contact with the ground? They're on most tents now and are also almost impossible to remove simply because it's hard to get a grip on them. That loop of cord sounds ridiculous, frivolous, until you reach down to pull out a peg. The peg-out points on the fly are adjustable, so when you get to that final peg and discover there's a rock there, which you can't peg through, you adjust the length of the strap rather than moving the tent. The fly opens on the side of the tent, so you don't need to crawl over packs to get out, or zips off completely to make a small groundsheet where you can sit sheltered from the wind while preparing breakfast... I think I'll use an actual groundsheet but I appreciate the sentiment.

It's also a very spacious tent. A lot of two-man tents require the two sleeping mats to be stacked on top of each other and still don't have space to fit so much as a torch inside as well. Provided you didn't mind being cosy, three people would fit in the Jannu with ease.

All in all, seriously impressed.


I didn't just sit admiring the tent all weekend. Although it was a struggle, I got up eventually each morning to wander around the festival, listen to some great music and do some dancing, maybe snack on some of the tasty food they had on site. I would, of course, return periodically to simply sit beside the tent, admire its form in the Adelaide sun, stroke it... Ahem. As I was saying, nice tent.

I would attach photos, but I'm afraid of the jealousies that might arise in the community at large and that people would soon hunt me down to kill me for my tent.

PS. OK, you got me. I would attach photos of the tent if they weren't sitting on the other memory card a few suburbs away. I'll add them in an edit later.

Edit: Happy now? Photo attached.