The preparation that has gone into this holiday has been full on. I was freaking out about doing the itinerary because the holiday was rapidly approaching, and I had not had the time to put into getting it to happen. However, I had forgotten that I had two autistic children. Both girls spent last week arranging and then re-arranging the itineraries on what theme park they were going to attend and in what order, updated daily to ensure that the best day for Wet and Wild was matched perfectly.
We left home an hour before we were due to, Lilian was super organised and made everyone pancakes for breakfast and once we had eaten, we headed for the open road at 9am. Once we had been on the road for four hours, we reached Coffs Harbour, and it was time for a fuel stop for both the car and us. After about an hour's rest break, we headed back out again to complete the second part of the journey.
We didn't get far before Isabelle realised that we were about to go past the Big Banana, and we had to stop so that she could have a look, as it had been quite a time since she had seen it, and she was only young. Being the really cool dad, I allowed the girls to get a souvenir from the gift shop. Whilst we were there, we got Emma a Big Banana fridge magnet, as fridge magnets are part of the things that she collects.
It has been a long time that I have been up past Coffs Harbour, and the new M1 / A1 has made a huge amount of difference in the amount of time that it took to get to the border. They have chopped huge sections of the trip out, and you no longer need to go through Grafton, Ballina, Lismore et al. with about 40km of road taken out just bypassing Grafton.
As we approached the border, it did not quite compute with Isabelle how we could be arriving at 5:02pm, and it was currently 5:09pm. Once we had checked in and had our bags bought up to the room, the girls headed off to the pool for a swim, whilst I moved the car into a park out on the street. The only complaint that I have about the resort so far is that there are minimal car parks considering the size of the resort.
The girls eventually returned from their swim and after getting changed, Lilian decided that we would go to the café to have dinner. Lilian looked at the menu, and god bless her, said that she was only going to have chips because the fish that she was looking at was $23. I told her that we were on holidays, and whilst we are on holidays she is not allowed to look at price tags.
Tomorrow we are going to venture across to Movie World, as Isabelle has stated that she has promised one of her friends that she would ride the joker
