Family Holidays

Family holidays are the best. Full stop. Trying to get a photograph of all five of us where we are all looking at the camera, almost impossible.

Just last week we all took off to Far North Queensland. First stop was Cairns – where we stayed in this gorgeous weatherboard house.

Cairns was fab with kids – Muddy’s waterplay playground, the stunning lagoon, the nearby Cairns Tropical Zoo and the Kuranda Heritage Markets in the rainforest – were all highlights.

The whole area from Cairns to Port Douglas was simply gorgeous. Palm trees, fields of sugar cane, sunshine rays breaking through the rain clouds – it’s a beautiful part of the world.

And to turn 40 at this place in Port Douglas was truly special.

But it wasn’t so much the destination that made the holiday it was the moments spent together. We saved for a year for this holiday. A year of planning and scrimping. It was everything we hoped for in a family holiday.

Every day flies by in a blur. Lunch boxes, work commitments, school runs, shopping trolleys filled with groceries navigating busy car parks, melt downs, routines, rushing. Stress fills us up to the brim. There’s too much time wasted getting stuff done and not enough time spent just being with each other. Long cuddles, hand holding, sitting quietly reading books, ice cream eating, duck diving in clear blue pools, laughing till we cry, getting to know each other without the noise of daily life.

Holidays for us are a gift. Holidays for us mend our fraying edges, strengthen the bonds of our family. With five us to get places, holidays can also be beyond our reach. The flights, the hotel rooms, the days out – it is tricky for us to navigate financially. We worked so hard for this to happen – writing and taking photographs. We worked so hard that we forgot what we were working for, until we stepped off the plane and took those first big breaths of the humid air. Instantly reinvigorating.

Our family was last week named a State Finalist of the Escape Travel Family Holiday Reviewer competition. If we won, it would allow us to holiday more together in places we could not afford. To win would not just be a gift of travel, new experiences and adventures – it would be a gift of togetherness. It would be a gift of love shared between our family. It would be more moments like this one.