Travel

Well, today we went for our first 4WD as a family – yes all seven of us! We managed to squish into our new 4WD, and trip around our local Queensland country – Darling Downs area. I passionately love the bush, whereas the rest of my family love the ocean. Pity we live closer to the bush, hey?

Back when we were a family of five, we owned a Hyundai Terracan and did plenty of bush bashing and camping. Unfortunately, when Hayley was born and later diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, we traded in the 4WD for a bus, which we later converted to hold her powered wheelchair. We thought our camping days were over.

A few years later, I came across a blog by another Aussie family who were not only travelling Australia (in a camper van), but also the world! The most amazing thing (to me) was that they also have five children, and one of them has Cerebral Palsy. I decided then, that if they can do it, so can we.

Fast forward a couple years and we now own a camper trailer, and just purchased a Nissan Patrol 4WD. Our goal is to become debt free and for me to build up enough strength to carry Hayley on my back in the areas a wheelchair can’t travel. Then we are planning on doing the ‘Big Lap’ around our beautiful Australian land.

Back to today’s first 4WDing experience as a family of seven though – Hayley slept most of the way, two year old Jessica kept pointing out the ‘quoot’ cows, and the three older kids played ‘eye spy’ and ‘scissors, paper, rock’ rather loudly. Hubby drove most of the way, and me – I just enjoyed the ‘serenity’ of the Australian bush.