A 12-hour road trip with my kids nearly killed me

While yes, we are still together (and alive), what he suggested as being a ‘fun’ alternative (and a cheaper one) to flying four people from regional Victoria to Sydney for a relaxing holiday (in the time before COVID-19 had reached our shores), resulted in the longest and absolute worst twelve hours of my life (and ironically his too). 

It was so bad that whenever anyone mentions some sort of family road-based holiday – campervans, caravanning, travelling around Australia, I physically shudder and try desperately to talk them out of it. I do so by sharing with them my story. This story.

It all began at the crack of dawn as I herded my children into the car while still half asleep. While this should have been the sign that this would never end well, my critical judgment was trumped by the strong coffee that my husband had pre-purchased from our local (in what I now suspect was a cushion for the events that were about to unfold.)

With coffee in hand, the journey began well and for a moment (twenty minutes in fact) it gave me a falsehood that perhaps this trip could be exactly how my husband described it, “fun”.

There was an old school game of eye spy, a Frozen-themed sing-along or two, it was like a family-road movie montage, one I could see being titled, ‘A Very Hendley Road Trip.’

But at around the 21-minute mark, it switched genres. It turned into a horror film.

There was screaming, there was terror, there was even blood (a paper cut counts). A Very Hendley Road Trip turned into The Hendley Soul Massacre (and FYI, I am only slightly exaggerating).

There was persistent and extremely high-pitched fighting between the two backseat travellers (the two that I was not permitted to 'accidentally' leave along the highway) that was about as enduring as a possessed Energizer Bunny.

The frequent toilet stops offered us the unique (yet undesired) opportunity to see nearly every public toilet and rest stop between our home and the Central Coast of NSW.

And then there was frequently asked yet perhaps the most dreaded question of all parents across the globe, "are we there yet?" Which was asked about every 15 minutes, usually just prior to yet another detour at a restroom/ moderately private area of scrub in which to do a bush wee.

Now, to be fair there were some highlights to this ordeal…sorry, I mean trip. There were the iconic landmarks of the Hume Highway, The Dog on the Tuckerbox in Gundagai and of course the Big Merino AKA Rambo (you know because it is a merino ram), in Goulburn. There was also the KFC next to Rambo which provided me with the comfort food and subsequent food coma required to make it alive (just not my soul) the remaining three hours of this trip/ slowly unfolding massacre.

Eventually, we did make it to our destination, and while we have never fully recovered it did prepare me for avoiding the same carnage on the return trip home.

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