top five: family funday

Groundhog day, again. Wish I was here.

Which is a brilliant segway into today’s top five: family holidays.

1. Europe. I know, tough gig. I was sixteen and among other things, spent a few days with my oldest bro Mark making our way from Denmark to Paris via Amsterdam. It’s only retrospectively I realise what a pain I must have been... Actually, it is possible I realised this at the time, why else would I complain incessantly of the cold while simultaneously refusing to wear warm 'ugly' clothing?

2. Life be in it camp for families with kids with disabilities. No, none of us have a disability, we just didn’t know that was the target demographic. Running family joke: (brother) Liam fit in very well. Zing! Never gets old, here all week.

3. Alice Springs/Uluru. Mum, dad and four kids squished in the back seat towing a caravan from Mebourne to Uluru and back. For the out of towners: this is far. Really far. Memorable moments include the car breaking down (more than once), Dad buying an axe and hacking down the table in said caravan so that it could be used as a bed and eating an enormous amount of custard (again, more than once).

4. Expo ’88. While actual memories of Expo are thin on the ground, there is a stellar photo of me with the most extreme camel toe known to man and a face painted like a butterfly. It has been on the mantelpiece at mum and dads for 22 years now, providing comic relief to visitors who stray too close to the fireplace and/or are pointed in its general direction by my mum who thinks it a great source of mirth. Apparently I 'loved those shorts'.

5. Horse drawn carriage – kicking it pioneer style. Cryptically, this involved four or five days spent pulling a horse drawn carriage thought the hills of somewhere (Victoria). Each night we set up an electric fenced area for the horses and had camp fires, marshmallows and then went to sleep in the carriage. We probably only travelled about two very slow kilometres a day, but we felt like Burke and Wills. Only we survived. They have a statue in town though, so it’s probably one-all.