campbell smith

Family Holiday

19 May 2008
Campbell Smith (Father)

Someone once told me that you don't have a family until you're outnumbered. And never has this simple truth been more evident than the on the family holiday.  Ahhh, the family holiday; ne'er were a more oxymoronic phrase coined. A holiday, as most dictionaries would explain it, refers to a day 'exempt from work'. If you consider leaving your comfortable home expressly designed for the purpose of containing small people, stuffing them all in a car, negotiating an airport seemingly specially designed to provide escape routes for toddlers, endure the stress of drinking an inflight coffee with a two year old on one side and a three year old on the other,  arriving at your destination to install a collection of people that a four bedroom house normally strains to contain into a two-bedroom apartment a holiday, then I pity the nature of your day job. You must work in an abbotoir, or as a federal Liberal frontbencher. Or both. A family holiday, as a parent, is not an exemption from work. It's charming and rewarding, occassionally even fun. But it's not relaxing. Even when you go, as we did, to sunny Noosa, on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland. A finer place on God's earth you're unlikely to find; sun, sand and the kind of climate that makes you wonder why you live where you do. We're lucky enough to have a family apartment there, right on Hastings Street and across the road from the beach. Magnificent location! And of course the Mountain Buggy is our best friend. Partly because it's a great aid to getting around, but mostly because it acts as an excellent holding pen,  keeping three children in one place (two restrained in the front, one jammed in on the skateboard on the back) with just one other roaming free. It evens up the odds, and makes the act of strolling along the baord walk pleasant and, dare I say it, even relaxing.

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