Road Trip!

On Thursday last week, I awoke to my Aunt V telling me she was leaving that afternoon with her son-in-law on a 3,000+km round-trip from Queensland to Victoria, which would last around 4 days, and would I like her to take any message to the family in Vic? Now, I’m well-known for my lack of spontaneity in my family, so I would have been surprised if I’d managed to come up with anything more creative than “just tell them I love them” before she took off. Imagine my own incredulity when 5 hours later I found myself in the drivers seat, on our way to my cousins house to tag along on this most epic journey.

And epic it was.

Why did I ask to come along? Because when it came down to it, I couldn’t come up with an adequate response to “Why not?” My grandparents are getting older, and having lost my father’s mother 3 years ago to cancer, I’m becoming more aware of just how little time you really get to spend with the people you love.

The main objective of this massive feat was to pick up a 1+ tonne generator and custom trailer that my cousins partner, SD, had purchased from Echuca, Victoria to replace the one that had been running their off-grid home but had died the previous week. My grandparents and several of my Aunt V and my mothers’ siblings [there are 11 of them!] live in and around Wodonga, on the NSW-Vic border, along with some of the 27 cousins I have on that side, but as we live so far away, and have done for over 25 years, I don’t see them a lot. SD’s plan was to leave us in Wodonga while he went to retrieve the generator, and pick us up on the way back through. As everyone reminded us constantly, it’s a long way to go for a one-night stay, but what are you going to do?

We were very fortunate to be undertaking this journey in a relatively new, spacious, and filled-to-the-brim with added extras 4WD, which would also make dragging the heavy load back a lot more bearable. This car, however, had been purchased as a kid-carrier for my cousin K, who we were now leaving behind with her first child, 2-month-old D [who smells divine – is there anything better than new-baby smell?]. K would be left in a remote part of the Gold Coast Hinterland, without a car, with a newborn, and minimal power to keep the house going, for the time we were away.

Bearing this in mind, SD wanted to stop for a night on the way down, to stay safe and make sure he made it back to his new baby in one piece. This was a revolutionary concept for both myself and Aunt V, who have each made this trip a few times before but had always driven straight through, swapping drivers when one got tired and sleeping in the car when not on driver duty – my brother and I once made the journey from the Sunny Coast to Melbourne in 19 hours! – but we thought why not? Aunt V had friends in Tamworth, NSW, so we called them up, told them we were on our way, and prepared to haul ass.

Half an hour later, filling up the fuel tank for the first time in Murwillimbah, we got the call to say that my grandfather was in hospital, having had a stroke during the night. We were assured that he was looking well [and indeed, is already back home as I type this – seriously, there are some people you can’t kill with a meat axe], but it did give us a little more incentive to get down there as quickly as possible, so we entered the ‘shortest route’ into the GPS and set off in earnest. This was a blessing on the way into Tamworth [which we snuck in and out of under cover of darkness, punctuated by pizza and a brief nights sleep], but we hit a snag not long after we left and got into central NSW proper. Dirt roads. Cattle grids. WILD PIGS ON THE ROAD. And a serious lack of good road food.

Pro Tip #1: Always road trip with a map. An actual map. A cartograph. On paper.

There is a lot of beauty to this big brown land of ours, but there is also a lot of really scary back roads that can be avoided but simply being able to see more of the picture than what can appear on a 3×5 inch LCD screen. I’m not saying we didn’t have some fun, but it was a bit hairy there for a while. I’ve never seen so many animals on or around the roads in various stages of life, death and decomposition.

Anyway, after some swearing and cursing, a solemn pledge to turn around and go back forty-effing-minutes-if-this-corrugated-dirt-effing-road-doesn’t-go-back-to-bitumen-soon, and as many pit-stops for coffee/Red Bull/loo breaks as we dared, we made it to something resembling a highway, vowed to never again deviate from the thicker lines on the GPS position map, and arrived in Wodonga, 30 hours after we set off.

Sidebar: I happened to drive the last 4 hours of this part of the trip, and as I pulled the car around to park in front of my Aunt R and Uncle P’s house, I noticed this view at the end of the street:

Cute, right? Bit boring, I guess. But here’s the thing – that was my primary school. I was born in Wodonga, and had only been back once since I left at the age of 8. I wouldn’t have been able to find my way back to this spot if I’d tried. And there it was, right in front of me. The gate I used to get picked up from after school. It was a homecoming of sorts, one I hadn’t quite felt while driving through the once-familiar streets that now seem so alien. 

Pulling me out of my reverie, however, was my Aunt R greeting us with a round of shots at the kerb, and dragging us into the house for more! What a family. After the message went out that Grandpa had gone into hospital, more of the aunts and uncles decided to visit, and my particularly awesome Aunt S and family offered, as they were coming from Echuca, to pick up the generator and bring it with them the following morning, saving SD something like 7 hours off his travel time. As they said, ‘that’s what family is for’.

Also this:

Yep, those are macarons. Don’t call them biscuits or cookies though, because that involves getting yelled at and the macarons going away. My cousin H runs her own business making and selling these little bad boys, and these are the ‘leftovers’ she brought with her to share around the family. I swear, I only had like, 2 dozen.

The entirety of our 22-hour-stay in Wodonga involved drinking, eating, sleeping, laughing, and holding hands with my grandmother. I had one brief visit with my grandfather in the hospital, where we laughed to discover that while Grandma is almost entirely deaf, loud noises really hurt Pa’s ears, so you have to shout at one and whisper at the other. Grandpa says I have my mother’s resounding voice. I told him she gets it from her father.

However, soon after Aunt S arrived with the generator, we sorrowfully said goodbye, continued saying goodbye for half an hour while the men-folk stood around rolling their eyes, packed up our baggage and macarons [finding new inventive ways to fit more in somewhere], and hit the road again.

With the heavy load in tow, and the increasing desire to be home as quickly as possible, we stuck to the coast highway the whole way home, and drove through the night. For the most part, it’s smooth-as-a-babies-bum dual-carriageway, but there were parts that rivalled the crap-tastic experience we’d had tramping through someone’s property. Get it together, Main Roads. And there are NO places to stop and refuel and eat [and pee!] between Melbourne and Canberra. Anyone listening? There’s a business opportunity right there.

[Speaking of, we discovered Oliver’s. Gourmet, organic roadhouse food? I nearly cried, I was so happy. I ate waaaaaaay too much crap food on this trip. Tasty, crappy food.]

Pro Tip #2: Take road food. Don’t rely on getting something on the way. The only thing on the way is McDonalds.

So, at the dawning of the fourth day [Monday morning], after my very first go at long-distance load-towing [at night!], we started to see familiar city names on the road signs, which pepped us up enough to make it home by about 10am. Only to arrive to a nightmare shit-storm of earth movers and truck drivers installing a new parking spot at the top of my cousin’s driveway. SD, who wanted to do nothing more than to pass out for 3 days with his baby son in his arms, was forced to spend the rest of the day on a shovel. Aunt V and I kept going the 2 hours we had left to get back to the Sunshine Coast, and while I also would have loved to indulge in a little nap/coma, I had about an hour before the photographer arrived to take professional shots of the house for the upcoming sale!

I’ve had 2 nights home since, then, and I’d say I’m mostly recovered. I met my baby-first-cousin-once-removed for the fist time, got to spend some quality time with my cousin-in-law, have some great stories with my Aunt V, saw Aunts R, S and M, grandmother and grandfather, cousins W and H, and even a few great aunts! Family is pretty amazing, the things they’ll do for each other – displace children to fit 3 extra people into the house for a night, go half an hour of of their way to haul a heavy load 3 hours north, refuse to take a cent or any kind of recompense, and give out drinks and food and exotic sugary treats like they’re going out of date.

I miss you guys. I should visit more often.

Love to you all,

Abby xx