He regularly undertakes month-long treks into the Aussie outback with his mates and thinks nothing of sleeping in a swag under the stars, cooking over a camp fire and not showering for days – even weeks – on end.

No. Thank. You!

His idea and my idea of roughing it are too different things.

My idea of camping doesn’t involve a tent, a sleeping bag or a shovel to go walking into the bush with every time you want to go to the toilet.

I prefer to glamp (glamorous camping) and even then that doesn’t involve one of those new glamping tents. My idea of roughing it involves our caravan (with reverse cycle air conditioning and TV), a comfy bed, the kettle on hand, a fully stocked fridge and the toilet/shower block within a short walking distance.

And for the first few months of each year, we take our van glamping along the Bellarine Peninsula. The van stays at the same caravan park and it becomes our home-away-from-home, a weekend oasis after a hectic week at work.

We’ve made some great lifelong friends with our glamping neighbours, many of them also from Ballarat, but some from other parts of the state.

The best part about my form of camping is happy hour, which usually starts around 3pm (hey, don’t judge … it’s five o’clock somewhere in the world).

Happy hour (who’s kidding, it’s often happy five, six, seven hours) usually involves congregating around someone’s van with a filled eski and an array of cheeses, dips and bikkies, and belly laughing about the most ridiculous things.

While some glampers share stories about that day’s fishing expedition and the one that got away, others prefer to talk about/debate/discuss such issues as politics, religion, football, families and certain unmentionable bodily functions and sounds.

This column is for Wizza Wills, my fellow glamper, who never fails to make us laugh, particularly when he’s in his Borat-style mankini. But that’s a column for another day.