It was supposed to be the exciting, much anticipated first week of our adventure! We had talked about and planned for this week for months. After several delays finalising our set up and solving a few early battery problems, we were off.
We had spent a few lovely days at a property in the Mary Valley over Passover with friends and felt ready to hit the road. What we intended to be a joyful few days drive out to Charleville (where we were headed to an Easter Family camp) ended up being a stressful dash.
We were still figuring out the whole set up and pack down routine, how to tow a caravan amongst traffic and how to best juggle 8 people living in a small space, food prep without a ‘proper’ kitchen, etc… when somehow we ended up with several children contracting gastro. We spent those first several days in a daze.
Driving pretty hard to reach our target arrival date; pulling up every 15 to 20 minutes for some sick child to jump out and vomit on the roadside; struggling to find safe places to pull over for such a purpose with two vehicles and a caravan; shoveling activated charcoal into the still-well members of the family at every chance in a bid to stop the spread; learning how to navigate and communicate between two vehicles when there’s no phone service; and pulling up late into free camps with exhausted bodies fumbling to find the ammenities and get set up and some kind of food sorted before nightfall. It was a baptism of fire.
As we pulled over yet again and I watched one of the boys jump out of the car and van travelling infront of me to wrench his guts up on the grass, and I listened to the toddler crying in the back of the bus because we’d stopped again and woken him from slumber… I remember thinking, “what in the world are we doing??!! who’s crazy idea was this??!!”
We really didn’t know what we were doing. We just knew that we were supposed to go. That first week shook the naive glamour out of our thinking. There really wasn’t a honeymoon phase. This was life on the road. There was no going to shelter in your safe warm private house until everyone’s well. Life happens in public when you are on the road. There you are, sitting roadside comforting a sick child while all the world drives past watching… or so it seemed.
We finally arrived at our destination, travel weary, a bit shell-shocked and ready to stay in the same spot for a few days. Perhaps with a start like that, it will all just be up and up from here on. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
First posted April 2, 2021
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