2500km and a world of wisdom

The bright lights of Port Macquarie...not.

We've been in the car a lot this last week. And it's not quite over yet. I sit in the semi dark Of our Port Macquarie hotel room and type this. We still have five hours to home tomorrow.


There's been good times and bad times but the hours spent behind the wheel Have given me plenty of time to observe several truisms of the Christensen long distance driving experience.

1.    Every servo is a potential toilet stop. Just be prepared for some shockers. If you do find a clean one force everyone to go whether they need to or not.

2.    No matter how many times I think I've nailed point 1. Issy will have to wee minutes after we leave a location with nice facilities. Her record for needing to go again is fifteen minutes. She is always busting. There is no middle ground.

3.    No matter what healthy snacks you take for yourself you will crave crap food while driving. And unless you have willpower of steel, you will eat it. I prefer to think of it as any calories consumed in a car as non counting.

4.    Even if the kids are stuffed full of healthy pre prepared food they will still nag you for McDonald's every time the see those damned golden arches.

5.    The DVD will always be scratched and get stuck at a crucial point, requiring removal, intensive cleaning and re finding of the crucial scene by the long suffering 9 year old.

6.    When point 5. gets a bit tedious, Harry Potter 1 & 2 read by the dulcet toned Stephen Fry can be a life saver. 

7.    Joshie mysteriously suffers a complete lobotomy of his manners lobe and shouts orders at me and his sisters during the entire journey, morphing back into his usual self on exiting the car.

8.    Even if you start with (count them) four full water bottles, three of them will be either lost or empty by the first 100 kms, and the final inch of water in the remaining bottle will cause more hysterical screaming than you ever thought possible.

9.    Everything important will slowly filter down to the bottom of the car and become impossible to find. Lost items can include shoes, jatz crackers (we never leave home without them), my phone, the chocolate, the next painfully negotiated DVD and the damned water bottles.

10.  After about 2500 kms, There's no place like home.