There's something magical about the quintessential Aussie beach caravan holiday over the Christmas break.
Maybe it's the sight of so many people kicking back in singlets and board shorts, relaxing in their reclining camping chairs. Maybe it's the longer-than-normal daylight hours, or the audible clip-clop of thongs, which are definitely the caravan park footwear of choice. Or maybe it's the perpetual aroma of sausages barbecuing to a crisp in someone's Weber. The truth is that Aussies do caravanning well.
![Caravanning is the ultimate expression of our intrinsically laid-back character, married perfectly with our love of the ...](/web/20170112002918im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/n/z/k/y/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtpkvs.png/1484140423825.jpg)
It is the ultimate expression of our intrinsically laid-back character, married perfectly with our love of the outdoors.
I love what happens to our kids when we go caravanning. For starters, we see a lot less of them. We take a big step back from our tightly scheduled world, and leap into days that are beautifully long and leisurely.
Caravanning often brings home to me how much we underestimate the ability of our children to entertain themselves. A recent trip with a group of friends with children saw our kids invent the most amazing games, using nothing but their ingenuity. They kept each other amused from daybreak well into the night, while the adults all sat back, gobsmacked at how amazingly well our offspring functioned without any direction from us.
At our beachside camps, the kids jump on their bikes and go for long, leisurely rides around the park and the surrounds. They have a chance to do something kids rarely get a chance to do these days: explore – on their own – without an adult helicoptering over them. They play cricket for hours with kids they have just met.
It's as though we take a leap back in time to an era where kids could flee their home in the morning, only to arrive back home to eat or sleep. Interestingly, they don't even notice the absence of their iPods or tablets.
Our caravanning trips are always technology free – there's no devices, and no television. The kids usually complain as we refuse to grant these items entry into our luggage, but upon arrival don't even mention them. Nights are spent talking, walking, reading. And then the kids crash into bed, utterly exhausted by a day of endless activity.
It isn't always picture perfect. Taking a family away for a week and expecting them to co-exist within the confines of a 4 x 2 caravan can certainly have its challenges. There are moments when, after we've pulled into the park, and as we begin to assemble our temporary holiday home, that the thought of staging my own disappearance definitely crosses my mind. The kids are grizzly after a long drive, I inevitably get donged in the head with at least one pole as we set up the awning, and we quickly realise that we have forgotten the can opener, the sunscreen, and the cord for the frypan.
Even before we leave home, and as we make countless trips up and down our steep driveway to carry load after load of consumables and supplies for our trip, thoughts of "why the hell are we doing this" surface. We question why we're leaving behind our spacious, airconditioned home to live in a tiny space without luxuries.
There's definitely a transition period involved, but when we leave behind the fuss and the fixation with all that "stuff", caravanning becomes one of the highlights of our family life. We crave it, we miss it, and once a trip is over, we can't wait to return to a world full of the aroma of burning sausages and forgotten can openers.
Amanda Sheehan is a freelance writer.
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