WHEN BRISBANE WELCOMED THE NEW YEAR AFTER THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF 2020, many were hopeful for the year ahead, ecstatic to say goodbye to the horrible year that had been 2020.

Little did we realise that what lay ahead was just a little more of the same ingredients – you guessed it, unpredictability. Unless you get bored easily and enjoy Life throwing curve balls continually, this has got to be the hardest way to do Life. Yet here we are, doing exactly that.

I remember when a dear friend of mine was about to travel overseas in 2019. She is a naturally anxious person and was worrying about whether she had packed enough for her trip to Europe and whether she was going to have all the necessary items handy for her then 10 and 8 year old kids. They were to travel to various countries and complete a 6-week trip across the great land. One of her biggest worries was travelling from Winter in Brisbane to Summer in London and making due adjustments with clothing along the way. I recall giving her some tips, having often travelled with a child from Brisbane to Cairns (where the weather can vary widely and we’re in the same country! The same state!) I remember that Sarah was thankful for some tips that she hadn’t thought of.

But these days, we have much more to worry about than what to wear into a whole different country. Not only are overseas flights on hold right now but we are having to organise domestic holidays whilst keeping in mind that our holiday may yet be CANCELLED !

Jason and I were in that predicament when we recently had to book a trip to Cairns (as some of you might know, that is where he is from and we are to visit his family sometime soon). Would it be best to fly or to make it a fun drive holiday? Catching flights means a 5 hour trip from leaving our front door to walking in through our Airbnb’s door on the other end – but still this is the shorter and more convenient option.

However, at the same time, we wanted to make the best of it (while we can still travel within all of QLD!) and create a wonderful drive holiday! Stop along at beautiful beaches along the way, go whale watching and perhaps even sandboarding! But a good trip up to Cairns can take up to 2 weeks.  Would we return with another 2-week drive? Did we have that kind of time up our sleeves?

In the end, we chose a mix of both! We would do a 2-week beautiful drive up to Cairns and book flights for our return home. But wait… What if we had another Lockdown (Home Restriction, guys, Home Restriction – we’re not criminals!)  around the time that we were to start our drive?!

When Covid-19 hit Australia last year, we cancelled a planned trip to Bali and we ended up with credit from the airline.

So we made a decision for the drive holiday to Cairns – we would return by plane using some of that airline credit that we are allowed to dip into! Plus we would also book flights to Cairns, in the event that we couldn’t start our drive on time. At least, we would have tried our best to make the trip happen. If after all that – buffering for bad turns of events – we still lose out on the trip, at least we would know that we had tried our best under very difficult circumstances. And in times such as these, that is all we can wish for.