After a massive year in 2018 (including parenting largely on my own with the patience and help of Master 17 and Miss 9) I was exhausted and feeling a lot older than I actually recall being!

I decided to chop all of my hair off and soon realised that I was my mum! My mum is an incredibly resilient and youthful woman but it was a shock to see her reflection in the mirror – especially since we’re so vastly different in so many other ways. I really want my own identity – seperate to my mum and to my role as mum (though that is a role I cherish and find incredibly important, rewarding and challenging).

I’ve been looking forward to the end of the year and the start of four weeks leave to get on the road and into nature again with the kids to discover a bit of Tasmania and rediscover myself and my family.

After a fairly solid day of packing and getting the final preparations underway, we were up at 5.30am (at least I was) to head off to Port Melbourne to board the Spirit of Tasmania for a day of sailing. We woke to some fairly dismal weather after a preceding week of heatwave but grabbed some hot drinks on the way and boarded the ship by 8am. I had booked us some recliners for the trip so that the kids could chill and rest if they needed so after dropping some stuff at our chairs, we went for a walk.

The ship has a cinema so I booked us three of the final six tickets to see ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ at 4pm and was looking forward to seeing with my Queen loving kids.

After a brief walk around the boat, we headed to our chairs to settle and I decided to take a natural ginger travacalm tablet (just in case) and settle back for a quick nap before getting stuck into my novel, taking Miss 9 to get her face painted, walking the deck, enjoying lunch in the cafe and then our movie.

I dozed for about an hour before receiving a surprise phone call (the teens seated next to us were providing running commentary throughout the trip on the availability of the 4G network!) and then grabbed some snacks to keep us going until lunchtime (it seems in my packing regime and attempts to empty the food in the fridge at home before we left, I neglected to pack any snacks for our sail!).

And that’s about where my plans took a sharp detour. I quickly went from feeling old and tired and ready for a relaxing read, to feeling 21 and hungover as hell! Reclining at the tail end (boat lingo is clearly not my thing) of the boat sailing the Bass Strait was a queezy ride indeed! Our daytime cruise consisted of me dozing between regular ginger tablets and deep yoga breathing (a handy skill learned while pregnant 18 years ago and etched in memory), I tried to join the kids for lunch and the movie but couldn’t manage it and Master 17 ended up watching the movie solo while Miss 9 kept me company until we reached Davenport.

Down on the car deck, Miss 9 was most pleased that all of the dogs were being reunited with their owners (she’d burst into tears when we parked and could hear some of them barking all alone). We were off the ship fairly quickly and on our way to Burnie to make camp for a few days.

Thank goodness for daylight savings – we arrived at camp at 8pm and quickly set up before heading into town to grab some food to rustle up dinner, Turns out 8.30pm on a Sunday isn’t ideal for food service so we ended up at a drive through before heading back to camp for a good nights sleep in the trusty Dove and the first night of our next instalment of 2 kids a camper and a kick arse mum adventures.