Back to Contents

ARE YOU INSANE?!

Or, travels with my children

 Michelle Johnston

It was only when we were sitting in the comfort of our living room watching Getaway on TV, and my six year old son said, "We have done that Mum, only in a helicopter!" that I realised the enormity of what we had done.

I recall the reaction of my close friend (another mother of two small children) when I told her we were planning to drive around Australia with our two children who were then aged 3 and 5. "ARE YOU INSANE?!" she said, with a horrified expression on her face. At the time I thought it was a bit of an over-reaction, and continued to think so most of the way around the country. It was just tonight, when I saw Ernie Dingo fly over the Bungle Bungles in a small plane, that I realised what it must have seemed like to my very home-oriented friend.

In April last year, my husband set off to drive our Ford Falcon station wagon to Perth, towing a Jayco pop-top camper trailer in which we were planning to live. I then flew to Perth with our children (a girl aged three and a boy aged five) where we were to start our adventure, following the Australian coast north from Perth and back around to Sydney.

I count us as some of the lucky few who have seen a little of our beautiful country. We were blown away by the space in Western Australia – what a gorgeous State. We stayed in many fabulous places like Cervantes, The Pinnacles, Monkey Mia, Geraldton, Exmouth, Broome, all through the Kimberley, and Lake Argyle. And that was only in the first four weeks of our trip. Into the Northern Territory, and we visited yet more spectacular places like Katherine, Litchfield NP, Darwin, Kakadu, Mataranka. On to Queensland and places like Mount Isa, Townsville, Port Douglas, Bowen, 1770, many of the Barrier Reef Islands, and so on all the way back down to Sydney.

Of course we stayed in national parks as much as possible, which was a thrill for the children. They had no idea how many stars there really are in the sky that you can’t see from the city.

The point of this article is not to list all the great places that we visited, but to reassure anyone with small children that it is indeed possible to live in a very tiny space with a husband and two small children and return home with a full head of hair. You will not go insane, trust me. You will come close on many occasions, but you will not actually do it.

We travelled over 22,000 kilometres in our trusty wagon, with our even more trusty caravan on the back. We were loaded up (down) with bikes, colouring-in books and about a million pencils and textas. My son had some Lego, and my daughter had some Fisher Price dolls and a toy camper wagon. That was it for toys. The most cherished item we took on the entire trip was two stable tables. These provided our children with the ability to keep themselves entertained in the back seat for 100 days.

My children learned so much on that trip. They watched their Mum and Dad dive with whale sharks in Western Australia. They patted dolphins in Monkey Mia and held baby crocodiles in Broome. They learned about green tree frogs in the Kimberley, and about what causes different colours of rocks in the Bungle Bungles. They were enthralled by the Darwin Museum and the Cyclone Tracey Exhibit, and just as impressed by the green tree snake on our roof in Cape Leveque near Broome. They learned that you don’t just kill a snake because it has entered your space, but that you leave it alone because we, in fact, have entered its space.

They learned about Aboriginal culture and history in Kakadu and very quickly picked up the Rainbow Serpent story in which (very simply), a child who doesn’t stop crying gets taken away by the rainbow serpent who lives in a rainbow. Not only does the child get taken away, but everyone around him gets taken away too. I would like to thank the creator of this legend as it abruptly put a halt to many potential tantrums on our trip.

Besides all the obvious nature lessons, our children also acquired many life tools. They learned that you have to wait for your turn for your tape in the car. You can’t have the Wiggles tape over and over and over and over and over. You must let Dad have Interstate Truckin’ in between, and occasionally let Mum have Bach to calm her nerves.

They also learned that not many things last forever. Once you have heard the Wiggles tape about six thousand times, it wears out and goes directly into the bin.

My son did miss an entire term of his first year at school and perhaps his handwriting was not as practised as the rest of the class. But boy, his ‘news’ was very interesting for the rest of the year.

There are so many things that we all learned. However, possibly the biggest thing that my children learned was that if you dream of doing something, then get organised, get out there and give it a go. It had been a dream of ours to travel around Australia with our children and, despite many near-insanity moments, we did it and we all loved it.

Michelle Johnston
NPA Membership Officer



Ringtail possums

 National Parks Association - Home Page
 
Other editions of the National Parks Journal
 

Top of page


Ringtail possums