Sparrow Lorelei and Robin Artemis photo gallery

To Narrandera and back, 24-26 July, 2011
Friday

We start the drive, carefully timed to be just when James finished work at midday-ish and when Sparrow was ready for lunch and her afternoon nap. Our plan was to give Sparrow her lunch in the car and for us adults to grab some lunch on the way when we stopped to fill up, which we did at the service station at Donovan Road just at the far side of the greater Melbourne metro area and about forty minutes and half a Sparrow-lunchbox from home. Then the two kids went to sleep and slept for the next couple of hundred kilometres, give or take.

Wunghnu, pronounced "one ewe". I thought about stopping in Shepparton at the big adventure playground there but Sparrow was still trying her hardest to stay asleep so we kept going. Wunghnu was the next town after she woke up. So we stopped at the little playground by the river and let her burn off some energy.

"I feel like I'm being watched", says Robin.

The nappy change train - two kids, two parents. You take opportunities where you get them on a long trip. And it turned out that all four of us needed a toilet stop about this stage of the journey, though the adults were much easier to deal with. Changing both kids at once is a novelty - it means there's someone else nearby to fish out a wet-wipe from their pack when yours is stuck. We gave the kids separate change bags for the trip, just to help keep it all straight and allow flexibility.

Dinner at Jerilderie. Narrandera is only 420 km from Melbourne, officially, the same distance as Perth to Geraldton. But it still took us in the end about seven hours given that every stop we made was a long one. We had dinner in Jerilderie, the last town before Narrandera and about 100 km south, after a beautiful sunset over the Riverina croplands. It was odd to try and point out to Sparrow how you could see when a town was coming in the dark because suddenly the lights appeared and slowly got closer. The idea that streetlights are only in one place and stand out in the darkness is something I remember finding mysterious and magical in the long car trips we did when I was a kid, but which I'd forgotten about living in the permanent light-haze that is Melbourne. I don't think Sparrow quite got it this time, but maybe on another trip.

Dinner was simple enough - there were two hot-food takeaways open, and we stopped at the first one. The lady there was very friendly and thought Sparrow was beautiful and awesome, kept trying to offer her treats. We accepted some of them - her suggestion of some chicken nuggets for Sparrow to eat while we were waiting for the slower main food to arrive turned out to be perfect. She asked where we were going and I said "Narrandera" and she said "Where's that?". I didn't think I'd pronounced it wrongly, but surely she'd know the name of the next town along the highway.

And we finally get to our cabin. "We're inside!" Sparrow must have said that at least forty times. It was suddenly a big deal to her that we were in a house of some sort. She immediately began investigating the very tempting and easy to access cupboards, while James and I began to arrange things how we'd need them and try to remove the dangerous and breakable objects from her easy reach.

We're staying at the Lake Talbot Tourist Park, in a lakeview cabin with spa. I'd imagined that the spa would have a view of the lake but no, it's in the little bathroom behind that feature wall. Still, it was there to have fun with. The caravan park lady and I obviously weren't quite on the same page when I booked though, as we didn't end up with quite the right amount of bed space. Easily solved by moving the sofa next to the bed to make a safe place to put Robin.

Somebody was short on cuddles after all that driving and so much time sitting in the car on his own. Cuddles and conversation and eye contact and interaction. Must be boring staring at the back seat of the car for so long, even if he did sleep for most of it.

Sparrow however was out to play, and play she did with all these best new toys. Forget everything else, we've come all this way for her to have new pots and pans and kitchen utensils.