There were three in the car and the little one said...

"PULL OVER! There's a fucking MOTH in here!!!!!!!!"

We never did find it. But it's the reason we got home at 2am instead of 1.30am.

What a whirlwind of a trip that was. Here are a few highlights to indulge the very few who are keen to know:

• If we coulda stayed more days we woulda.

This is Lolly being "funny" because she's sitting in the car next to her usual carseat. Hi-laaarious good times. Just ask her.

Suck it up. Ok, yep, we're all a bit over it now.
Driving since 2.45am on Day 1, we were just outside Sydney at about 2pm when Steve took this.

Lolly does her Missy Piggy impersonation

• Night 1: I honestly thought we had broken the LGBB for good, such was the screaming like I've never heard her scream. Nobody could soothe her, not Marley, not Cutie Pie (a new little soft-dolly fave friend), not Mummy doing the usual distractions like blowing her hair (met with a "get the F out of my FACE and stop BLOWING on me" from her) or pretending to bite off her toes (similarly met with screeching an octave higher than that heard by dogs).
At that point, my own resolve completely shattered, all I could do was speedily snap up those goddamn snaps (who the hell can put one of those suits on a kicking, convulsing, desperately tired baby??) and put a boob in her mouth - sorry Paul, if you're reading, for the visual. And the feed didn't calm her like it normally would either. There's a bedtime story that has now become part of her nightly ritual. It's called Say Goodnight and it's four pages long, contains about 20 words and big faced babies having a play before falling sound asleep. The LGBB looooooves it. And when overtired, as I discovered, instead of not wanting to read it, she just turns the pages angrily, like a baby possessed. It's so bloody funny. But I daren't laugh, oh no. She's frightening in those moments when I am between her and her dummy and sleep. Far out *takes short shallow breaths*
So before I could leave her "holiday bedroom" (for everything we saw and encountered was prefaced with the word "holiday" so she could understand what the biiiiig drive in the car had been for), I had to first read Say Goodnight. Three times. I'm unsure if I needed to read it more than once. But she kept groping at the pages so I kept reading. Like the obedient girl I am. And then, God bless 'er, I tucked her in, said "Night-night" and turned around for one last look.. and she'd fallen into a coma within the three paces I'd taken to get to the door.

"Forget the damn merry go round, this plant is SOOOOO exciting!" (for some reason this bush caused shrill squeals of delight from the LGBB)

• After that first night, sleep times were again easy-breezy Covergirl. She is SO like me in that regard: anywhere strange, you get yourself to sleep pronto lest the resident boogyman come and scratch your eyes out. No. I'm sure that in her case it was more that she was knackered from all the new sights and sounds than any deep-seated fear of the dark like yours truly.

Being silly with the camera, having lunch and waiting for Daddy.

• Our land ladies were anything but ladies. But oh, how they were very hospitable and in love with their investment (it was indeed a gorgeous apartment with an even nicer outlook - ocean and lake entrance, both kinds!). This place was stocked with everything. And clean? As a whistle.

• Why do places along the Hume have such strange names?

• I met up with someone I've known for a few years now but never met in person, who is truly. Wonderful. You know those people you meet sometimes and you just cannot believe your "luck" that they are in your life? And equally, that they are in it by their choice (as much as yours)? I want to say something syrupy like, I wish she was part of my family or some similar sucky thing. Except... it's better than that. She is part of my family. My spiritual one. Which somehow is the more real to me these days? (and that's not to say my blood relatives are not part of that family of choice either, it's just very refreshing to make a selection in order to surround oneself with people who give and take in equal amounts). It's the one that has become my reward for the place I have come to for now, and not merely the one bestowed on me at birth.
Each encounter I have with her is like turning another page in this amazing book. And of course, I was ashamedly unprepared (as I mostly am when people see me in person, I never have the words I want to say, I get stage fright and shy in equal amounts) yet came away wishing I could have spent so many more hours with her. It was the icing on the trip.

And thanks for the socks, again, by the way. SO gorgeous.
Lolly is rapt with them.
Especially the box they came in.

• What the hell is going on with Pizza Huts around the country?? Do the youth of today have no respect for the black, red and white? I saw a gutted, graffitti'd, very sorry-looking old Pizza Hut of yesteryear as we were leaving Gosford (another lovely bit of the world up the coast there) and I swear, I could have been back here at home looking at the one just over the hill from us - literally and figuratively - shaking my head at the disrespec' of the hoodlums who have vandalised what was once a very, if not healthy, mouth-wateringly smelling establishment. Remember? Oh surely you all have memories of birthday parties or at least family outings, sitting in those red padded seat booths, with the sticky tables, the watery "Coke", the pizzas dripping grease down your arm?

• It seems a huntsman thinks nothing of being on the 7th floor. For the entire. Five. Days. Outside our door. Oh and yes, there was another one on the car. A pretty grey and white striped one. Bless.

"I can see through tiiime!" The LGBB thinks she's going at warp speed

• There was this man we saw sporadically while we were there and DAMN I didn't get to take a photo because I wasn't fast enough. He was impossibly tanned, a retiree we guessed, on a motorised cart. But not any old cart. Oh no, this was like a Rolls Royce of motorised carts. I swear, I reckon it had a better engine under the hood than the Tardis. And he had one of those plastic expressions, it didn't change. I decided his name was Bernie. And he had probably died about a week ago but his friends had tied him to his sweet ride and put it in gear and let him go off, in order to stay at his beach house. But the funniest part was, aside from the tinted glasses, the George Hamilton tan, the old-man bling (you know, watch, strange gold chain around neck, etc etc), he had this slicked-back white hairdo that, I swear, looked like he was clocking about 180kmh. His hair belied the fact that he was actually gadding about doing roughly 2kmh.

Bootiful. And the view in the background's not bad either. Boom-tish.

• If I never take another photo of the LGBB again (get off the floor, stop rolling about, it wasn't that funny), I am satisfied with the shots I got of her at the beach. Oh my. I think my heart exploded.

"I'd tell you if I liked the beach, Mother, but you've done this chin strap so tight I can't actually open my mouth"

"Ahh! Lolly Miyagi know trick or two about Karaté, Danyo-san"

"Mmmm, yes, that was a good summer. Must do my nails when I get home."

"And then I clapped and the sand went eeeeeeverywhere!"

"Ah, yes, Daddy, but if I go like.... THIS... really suddenly, can you stop me from falling in?"

• Sometime around midnight driving home, the only car on the Hume surrounded on all sides by trucks, is when the madness kicked in. We started musing about whether truckies' wives insist on them being "safe" by ensuring the cabins of their trucks are adorned with every fairylight they can get their hands on. These were known to us as the Party Trucks on the way up (you could see them from miles away and some of them had all the colours of the 'bow on them) but on the way back, they were past contestants on "Bulb My Ride" - a new reality show not unlike Pimp My Ride, for truckies to turn over their tungsten-challenged rigs into glowing princesses of the highway.

• I told you we went mad.

Somewhere around Benalla, just after midnight, still two hours from home.