Tips for Travelling with a Toddler: What Actually Helped on Our Family Trip to Busselton

After weeks of sickness and feeling run-down, my husband asked what he could do to cheer everyone up. My response? “I just want to go away for a short trip so I don’t have to cook or do laundry for a few days.” Little did I know, you can’t escape the never-ending laundry pile!

Here’s what I learnt during our time away.

Bring Snacks, Snacks and More Snacks

After saying I didn’t want to cook for everyone, of course I remembered I have a small child who needs constant feeding. So no, you can’t escape the cooking either.

I packed all of my son’s favourite travel-friendly snacks. Then we tried to go out for lunch one day. I offered him every snack I’d packed, he turned down every option and went for my hot chips.

Hot chips are one of my favourite foods. I hate sharing food, but I guess I have to accept this is my life now.

Survival tip: Next time, I’ll have to come up with some new and exciting snack options to interest his appetite… easier said than done, right?

Always Have an Escape Route if on Tour

On our first morning, we booked ourselves a train ride down Busselton Jetty which included a tour of their underwater observatory. Busselton Jetty is 1.81 km (1.12 mi), making it the longest timber-piled jetty in the Southern Hemisphere. You definitely want to catch the train when you have a toddler in tow.

We booked our tour for first thing on Friday morning, hoping it would be a quieter time slot. We were right, and we got lucky. We had an entire train carriage all to ourselves and we could let our boy move around freely as the train ambled down the jetty. We arrived at the end and everything was going well… so far.

Of course, once the tour started, things didn’t go so smoothly. There was a lot of standing around and listening to our tour guide, which isn’t suitable for a toddler with the attention span of a piece of Lego. The tour goes down a spiral staircase, so there wasn’t any opportunity for us to let him go for a walk. My poor husband had to carry him for the entire tour, and our son spent the whole time trying to escape.

Once we reached the bottom, we thought it would be safe to let him go for a walk… and then the tour guide brought out the VR headsets. My husband and I politely declined (obviously), but the rest of the group were immersed in VR-land while our boy ran around between their legs. Then he saw a fish through the viewing window, ran over and smacked the glass, scaring the fish… and we knew it was time to go.

Luckily for us, we were able to exit this tour on our own by heading back up the staircase to the outside world. I couldn’t help but wonder what we would have done if we were on one of those tours where you can’t exit easily.

The return train ride was less relaxing. Our son discovered the train carriages weren’t sealed off, and if he crawled under the seats, he could get to the next carriage. We then spent the rest of the train ride wrestling a tired, grumpy toddler trying to escape his parents at every chance. He also got obsessed with the screws holding the train together. He was insisting they were blueberries and becoming very upset that I didn’t have any blueberries to offer him.

Survival tip: If you want to do a tour, make sure there’s an easy escape route and try to book for a quieter time slot if possible… and don’t forget the blueberries!

Don’t Bring too Many Toys

We packed a bag of my son’s favourite toys and books. I’m grateful we did, because they came in handy for the car trip. The drive was nearly three hours, so I sat in the back with him, acting as his treat dispenser: handing him snacks and toys each time he started to get restless.

Once we arrived at our accommodation, the toys became redundant. He discovered how fun it was to push my empty suitcase around the room, open all the kitchen cupboards that weren’t child-locked (something he can’t do at home), and sit on the step leading up to the bedrooms. For some reason, whenever he finds something at his height that he can sit on, he finds it a real novelty.

Survival tip: For the rest of our holiday, the toys remained untouched until it was time for the car trip home again. Next time, I’ll pack lighter on toys.

Pack Spare Sheets for the Cot

We haven’t had a nappy explosion at night for so long, and I haven’t had to do any night sheet changes in months. When we were packing, I said to my husband “I’m just going to pack one set of sheets.” As I was saying it, I knew I’d jinxed myself.

The first night was amazing! He slept for 13 hours straight without even waking for a feed. We ended up waking him up at 7:30 am to discover the poor guy had thrown up in his sleep. We didn’t even hear this on the baby monitor that I listen to so obsessively all night.

This left me trying to handwash sheets and pyjamas in the bathroom sink and attempting to get them dry on a rainy day. Silly me, thinking I was running away from my laundry duties.

Survival tip: If you think you won’t need something, you probably do. Just pack it anyway.

Leave Around Nap Time… or Don’t

The journey to Busselton was a little rough, we had to stop three times so our boy could stretch his legs. We decided on the way home, we’d leave around midday, which is when he has his nap. We thought we were so clever, surely he would sleep most of the way home.

Of course he didn’t!

The trip home was still better than the trip there. He had a few whingy moments and I thought he was finally going to fall asleep… but then he got a second wind. He was still a lot more settled overall, and we managed to drive the whole way home without stopping. I think the exhaustion helped keep him calmer in the car. It also meant as soon as we got home, we put him down for a nap, which gave us time to unpack.

Survival tip: I’m not sure about this one. Was it better to leave at nap time? It worked better for us on this occasion, but next time, who knows?

The Parents Need a Bottle Too

Always have a bottle of wine in the fridge for after bedtime. Since we were staying near the Margaret River wine region, we had to stop in at a winery. On our last night, my husband and I shared the bottle of wine. We got the perfect buzz on and found a board game in our accommodation cupboard, Pub Trivia.

Back in our carefree days, we would often go to pub trivia nights, and sometimes we would win, usually when it was a themed-trivia night. We played a few rounds of trivia and realised we’re not as clever as we used to be, but we had a fun time.

At home, we often go our separate ways in the evening as we both have our own projects we’re working on, and it was nice to have a few nights where we spent time together.

I once heard a quote: “Parents don’t go on vacation, they just take care of their kids in a different city.” For me, this was very true.

I still found the experience different to being at home, but in a good way. We had a lot more planned activities than we would normally, so our toddler was kept busy, stayed (mostly) out of trouble, and slept well. We also spent a lot more time together as a family. At home, we will sometimes take it in shifts to get everything done, so all three of us aren’t always together at the same time.

I had a holiday to escape cooking and laundry… and came home to a huge pile of washing and no food in the house — but all in all, we had a great weekend.