To be brutally honest, this trip is not overly relaxing and I really don’t know if I’d do it again in a hurry. Or at least, not whilst pregnant.
I have my days. I have my moments. Some days I’m like, ‘Wow, this is livin’ and others I’m like,‘Take me back to my warm kitchen, comfy couch and walls to contain Luca in’.
This is not your average holiday. I wouldn’t even call it a holiday. It’s more of an adventure, full of ups and downs and all of life’s lovely challenges.
So far we’ve slept in Deniliquin, Tamworth, Dubbo, Crescent Head, Yamba, Evan Heads, Broken Head, Brunswick Heads, Kingscliff, Burleigh Head, and now in Noosa Heads. That’s a lot of Head! We’re planning to continue north and stay on Fraser Island Head, Agnes Waters Head, 1770 Head, and returning via Stradbroke Island Head, back to Yamba Head and then home to Ocean Grove Heads. (Ocean Grove Heads! How political!).
We had originally planned, or I had planned/thought we would get up to the Daintree rainforest above Port Douglas… but I just don’t think we have the time… nor the patience… to do the driving with the little one. I forget how big of a country we are. Currently we’re only half way up the coast and to get up there would require us to do 2 solid days of driving… Which is not gunna happen. A real shame but holidaying with child is tiring enough, let alone a toddler. And a pregnancy.
Being on the move constantly with a toddler who is enjoying tantalising with my limits, an ever growing baby inside of me that feels like it’s trying to escape and throw in my hairy, hairy husband Lach, and I sometimes feel like I’m traveling with a circus and I’m the star of the show. “DA-dahhhh. Is she happy or is she sad? Behold the incredibly hormonal, over tired, ever growing, feral and sensationally swollen Woman”…. And out I waddle holding my back wincing in pain, gnawing on a toblerone. “Ahhh, G’day there”.
So far I’ve had two meltdowns and think I’ve cried out to go home like a child only once… So far. Poor Lach. I try to keep myself together for his sake. He’s worked so hard for this dream to come true but there are some moments I’m just like… ‘Nope’.
One freezing night the water in the caravan shower went cold. I had a meltdown. Bawled into my towel like a baby and had to be put to bed.
The smallest uncomfortably sets me off.
And because Luca is so free-range on this trip she has become more and more defiant. She’s changing so much every day. New words, longer sentences, telling us what to do. Braver. She’s also very testing. She runs away at every opportunity found. She doesn’t listen to us anymore and is becoming quite a profesh at doing the strop and even getting angry at us. When I call out to her to stop, she yells back at me angrily with a ‘NO WAY’. She doesn’t have her four walls to be contained in, so she is acting super confident in an overly adventurous way- which scares me. She used to be so sweet all the time but now she’s getting attitude… just like her mother I guess, only she’s way younger than I was when I developed mine. Onlookers think she’s hilarious. And sometimes it is.
Today she fell off some rocks into the river after we told her not to again and again and chased her off them copious amounts of times. She struggled, gasping and bobbing in the water for a few seconds before we could reach her and she swallowed a good bit of the river. We’re pretty sure she scared herself (and us) enough to hesitate before defying our command about climbing on the rocks again. We shall see… I’m dubious. So dubious.
All my life I’ve always heard adults use the expression,‘They’ll only learn from experience…’ so I guess I’m that adult now.
Yesterday after visiting an old, dear friend of mine, my oh so lovely and determined husband (wink) ‘missed’ the highway turn off in Brisbane (I say missed but really he wanted to listen to the advice of the stupid computer navigator rather than listen to my instructions… needless to say, there was quite a bit of angst in the air) and he took us into the middle of the city on a goose chase that added an hour onto our trip.
Our caravan is a mighty 23 foot in total with the car, our rig is around 12 meters or more long, so it’s no easy feat to maneuver and requires lots of attention and concentration to get around. Especially in busy cities which we have been avoiding… until now!
Luca was becoming restless, irritating and demanding her dummy and more ‘snacks, snacks, snacks’. I had google maps going on both our iphones, the road map on my lap, the stupid car navigator directing us a million ways in that irritating computer voice and my husband bantering away in the driver’s seat next to me. It was like a scene out of a Chevy Chase movie. We were all so tense in the car, arguing over who was right and who was wrong and which way to go and don’t turn there, stay in this lane, move to that lane, watch out for that truck, don’t kill us, that when we finally got out onto open highway and we could breathe again, I kind of lost it.
The chin wobble began, the eyes started to well up, the pregnancy hormones kicked in and in flooded the empty sadness. All the tension from the previous weeks of always packing up the caravan, preparing to leave, rain, cold, unpacking the caravan, rain, cold, setting up, washing clothes in laundries, shopping and restocking, rain, cold, chasing Luca around, reading maps, hunting through camping apps to find a spot to park up for a night or two and trying to cook nutritious food in a little space for us all is tiring stuff and needed to be let out of my body. So there I sat, limp in the passenger seat, surrounded by maps, feeling miserable and sobbing to myself.
Once we had all calmed down from our city experience and Lach was able to lovingly look at me again, he decided not to push on to our desired destination and to just pull up in the next sunny coast town… which was Noosa… for a solid week. No complaints here.
We all need a bit of solid routine and consistency back in our lives. No more one night here, two or three nights here, just a solid week in one spot. And what a spot we have. Right on the banks of the river. The sun sets and moon rises at our campsite are positively magical. Today I woke up a different person and we’ve finally reached the land of sunshine that we have been in search of.
Today, up here in QLD it is a sunny 25 degrees and not a cloud in sight. I even had my first beach swim today. It’s taken me four weeks to get in the water and today was finally the day. Dripping with salty water and slathered in sunscreen, I lay on the warm sand in my bikini and was reborn.
Laying there, 25 weeks pregnant in my bikini and resembling a squishy, raw, roast pork leg wrapped in string, feeling the sunshine beaming down and melting into my skin was pure and utter bliss. The beach was heavenly, Luca was sweetly playing in the sand, Lach was relaxed and I thought to myself, ‘This is livin”. This was worth the angst of yesterday’.
In all fairness I knew this trip was never going to be a breeze. I knew it was going to be challenging. Both on my mind and my body. That’s why I prepared myself by downloading meditation podcasts, calming music, packed all my essential oils, my crystals and bought my diffuser. The caravan, when properly set up resembles a day spa. Zen.
I know I sound kind of ungrateful to be on this adventure, but don’t get me wrong, I know exactly just how lucky and fortunate I am to be doing this trip and I really AM so grateful. My husband worked hard for this trip to come to fruition but the honest truth is…. its freaking exhausting. Have I stressed that enough? EX-Haus-TIng. That’s the truth. And it doesn’t help that my new baby is eating me from the inside out either. But it hasn’t all been bad. Not at all. We’ ve had many positively memorable moments too and we’re surrounded with such natural beauty along the coast line, it’s hard to stay upset for long… and I’m booked in for a massage at the RACV day spa here in Noosa tomorrow…mmmmmmmmm massaggge.
With my ever growing belly, my rampant hormones, a toddler, a 23 foot caravan and a stubborn man in tow, I know I will still no-doubt have more meltdowns and Lach and I will definitely still argue over that stupid computer navigation thingy. But I’ll learn to appreciate those moments and one day we’ll look back on them and be like, “Remember that time in Brisbane?”
I guess that’s how I now look at this trip. Like life really. What goes up, must come down.
How can we truly appreciate those magical moments if we don’t have to swim upstream to get to them. (But secretly in the back of my mind that little voice is still nagging at me, “You wouldn’t of had to swim upstream in the first place if your husband just had of listened to your instructions”)
Ha!
Leave a Reply