During the last school holidays, I did a lap of NSW with my daughter on her Ls in a week. 40 hours, 3148 kilometres – and a top speed of 90km/h.
Nonetheless, I can highly recommend it for those parents wondering how on earth they are going to get 120 hours in their son’s log book before he can go for his P’s driver’s licence. With the Term 3 holidays coming up, for some people an opportunity may present itself to take yourself on your own road trip in the passenger seat somewhere through NSW.
It has many benefits. Firstly, your teenager will be grateful to sit next to you for eight hours a day. This is unprecedented.
Secondly, he won’t have anywhere else he needs to be – he is hundreds of kilometres from anyone he knows. And because he can only drive for two hours without a break, there are also many, many opportunities for coffee, walks around small towns and pies. Lots of pies. You are also doing yourself a favour; instead of squeezing endless, pointless drives in between work, home, food, homework etc, you are getting dozens of hours in that logbook in the relative blink of an eye, seated next to one of the favourite people in your life.
Just in case you seriously want to take me up on the suggestion in the future – either this holidays or in the years to come – below is the pathway to the P’s we took. There are hundreds of variations of course, but this one at least has you on all paved roads, a place with a motel or a pub to stay safely at each night, and the capacity never to have your petrol tank go below half full.
Day 1: Sydney to Coonabarabran (lunch in Mudgee). See Dark Sky Park just out of town.
Day 2: Coonabarabran to Lightning Ridge (lunch in Moree). See old mine turned into tourist attraction.
Day 3: Lightning Ridge to Bourke (lunch in Brewarrina). See Bourke Museum.
Day 4: Bourke to Broken Hill (lunch at ‘Emmdale’ roadhouse – important for fuel).
Day 5: Stay at Broken Hill. Have a break. See Mad Max Museum.
Day 6: Broken Hill to Hay (Lunch at Mildura).
Day 7: Hay to Sydney. (Lunch at Wagga).
As a tour it was great. These were a number of towns I had heard a thousand things about but had never been to. Places like Lightning Ridge and Broken Hill were really fascinating. Bourke too – in order to get my daughter’s night driving up we drove through every street of Bourke one evening.
But it was the wide open roads between the towns that were so awe inspiring. I was blown away by the big skies with the land spreading to the horizon in every direction. I kept telling my daughter to stop in the middle of a two hundred kilometre stretch of highway just to be able to stand in the middle of the road, turn around and drink it all in (you didn’t even have to watch for traffic – you could see it coming four kilometres away).
We learned a lot about regional Australia. Not just the ‘inner suburbs’ of regional Australia like Bathurst or Orange, but way out west of NSW. And, to go with the outback vibe, my daughter got to also hear more Midnight Oil and Cold Chisel (and yes, I admit it, New Order and Michael Jackson) than she ever thought she would have to in her life.
Planning to do something like this with your son in the next few years might also be a once in a lifetime opportunity. There are a lot of deep and not-so-deep conversations you can have on the road. You get each other’s almost undivided attention.
A lot of boys prefer parallel talking to face to face talking, and these roads deliver that in spades. You’ve got nowhere else you need to be. You can even have a rule that the first or the last hour is music/podcast free. There are a whole lot of different of ‘quality time’ experiences you can have with your kids – holidays, beach, skiing, bushwalking etc – but for its sheer value in getting the ‘L’ driving hours up too, I think this one is a winner.
I hope that you and your sons have a great break when it comes,
Michael Parker
