Where Grandpa's House Once Stood

The highway stretched northward as Sal and Grannie began their journey back to Queensland, the bus carrying them through landscapes that would gradually shift from temperate to subtropical over the coming days. This mother-daughter road trip had been circled on calendars for weeks, a chance to share the nomadic experience with someone who'd watched our unconventional life unfold from afar.

Their first stop carried weight beyond mere logistics. Bateau Bay, that stretch of Central Coast where childhood memories clustered like shells on sand. This had been the stomping ground of family holidays past, when Grandpa's holiday house had served as summer headquarters for generations of beach days and backyard barbecues. The coastal air still carried those echoes, salt-tinged and familiar, even as the landscape had evolved around them.

Mike and Tricia's home sat directly across from where Grandpa's place had once stood. The original house, repository of so many family memories, had long since surrendered to progress. In its place rose a modern beach house, all clean lines and contemporary design, bearing no resemblance to the weatherboard cottage that lived on only in photographs and recollection. Yet staying with Mike and Tricia created its own bridge between past and present, their hospitality transforming what might have been melancholy pilgrimage into warm homecoming.

The welcome began before luggage had even been unloaded. Coffee appeared with the particular timing of hosts who understand travellers' needs, the caffeine cutting through road weariness while conversation flowed easily. A delicious meal followed, home cooking that tasted infinitely better than anything prepared in a moving vehicle. The hot shower, after a long day behind the wheel, felt almost decadent in its abundance and pressure. Finally, a proper bed awaited, stationary and spacious, the kind of sleeping arrangement that reminded Sal how different life had become since choosing wheels over walls.

Evening wound down gently. Sal and Grannie retreated to their room, sneaking in a Law and Order episode with the particular pleasure of familiar entertainment in unfamiliar surroundings. Sleep claimed them quickly, bodies grateful for horizontal rest after hours of highway hypnosis.

The alarm at 6:30am felt less cruel than expected, morning light already promising another good travel day. Breakfast materialised with the same generous efficiency that had characterised their entire stay, fuel for the kilometres ahead. By 8:30am, goodbyes had been exchanged and the bus was rolling once more, Bateau Bay shrinking in the mirrors as the Pacific Highway beckoned northward.

The drive required more stops than usual. Sal hadn't navigated solo for this length of time in a while, and the bus demanded respect and attention that shared driving typically distributed. Each rest area provided opportunity to stretch, to reset, to remind muscles that sitting wasn't their natural state. These pauses punctuated the journey without disrupting its momentum, necessary interruptions that kept driver and vehicle in harmony.

Coffs Harbour would provide the night's accommodation, another step closer to Queensland's familiar embrace.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres south, Anth's situation had shifted in his favour. The clinical trial that had initially placed him as alternate had opened its doors properly. Someone had been excluded, the medical lottery spinning in his direction for once. His stay was now secure for the next eight days, confinement transformed from possibility to certainty. The funding this would provide rippled forward into future adventures, each day of blood draws and medical monitoring translating eventually into diesel and groceries and freedom.

The parallel journeys continued: Sal and Grannie navigating highways and memories, Anth navigating protocols and patience. Different roads leading toward the same eventual reunion, our family's familiar pattern of divergence and convergence playing out once more across the Australian landscape.Read more