Travel

The best thing I’ve ever done for my 70 year old Mum…

Jun 05, 2017

This year, I took my 70 year old mum on an adventure that was one of the best things I, as a son, have ever done.

Mum was widowed at the age of 49. It’s not right! I know mum is not the only one that this has happened to, but that hasn’t eased the pain for either of us over the years. That was over 20 years ago now.

I was pretty much born and raised holidaying on a combination of school campsites (with both my parents being teachers) and taking advantage of school holidays with caravan. Whilst not being what I would class as ‘adventurous’ my parents were keen travellers. In fact, it was while on a road trip through the Kimberley that they had to come home as Dad’s health plummeted. Following dads passing Mum continued to be quite active in fact, in her early 60s, she walked across England! But there were certain types of trips that she felt she would never be able to do again.

Fast forward 20 years. I’ll confess early on to being a sentimentalist. So this trip was and always will be a special one for me. It came about because my wife (whom I refer to as ‘T”) was over the desert treks at the time and I mentioned I’d like to do the iconic Birdsville Track. But even more so for me was the lure of western and central Queensland, an area I only knew by map. It has so many of the ‘must do’s’ in the greater region that it has been calling me towards it for many years! Towns with names synonymous with early settler history such as, Cloncurry, Winton, Longreach, Charleville, Cunamulla, etc. I mentioned this over a coffee when my Mum was visiting one day. Mum also said she had this interest and has had for many years (she had been someway up in that region earlier years before on a bus trip but wanted to see a whole lot more). I turned to ‘T’ and said we should go, to which she replied, “I’m not interested, why don’t you two go together?”

Little did she realise at the time that we thought she was serious, so we excitedly started planning! That had a minor backfire later, but that’s not the point of the story… So we needed early on to find a date. I could afford about 2 weeks of leave only. This was going to be a hard and fast trip. No mean feat as Mum was 70 years old at the time (a very fit 70 I might point out). So I proposed dates that I thought would have a sentimental significance. We departed on Mother’s Day and returned on her 71st birthday! Good, huh?

She didn’t care! Ah well.

We got stuck into the planning. I did food, route plan, emergency stuff, vehicle stuff (all the things I do for a living) and Mum… well… she packed her bag. That was the idea. Now it is fair to say that mum had some reservations about being in some of the remotest areas of Australia at her age. But right from the word go we worked towards making it as accessible and comfortable as possible for the entire trip. This meant capping the hours of driving per day as mums back isn’t flash, making sure that all the delicate issues were taking care of (from toileting onwards) through to sleeping comfortably and making sure she had access to showers. I wanted to take Mum on a one on one tour guide experience. 15 days, 5300kms, Mum, me, The Cruiser (Big red Car) and Dusty the campertrailer.