Travel – when done properly – is much like warfare. The element of the surprise should always be paramount. Whether you’re hooking the caravan to the back of the car and heading to Merimbula or invading France, no one should ever know you’re coming. That’s why you must always begin in the dead of night. The similarities between holidays and ground-based military incursions don’t end there. As kids, not only did holidays begin with us being ripped from our slumber in the dead of night, we were also forced to wear fatigues and camouflage paint. Little wonder people thought we were weird.
Travel – when done properly – is much like warfare. The element of the surprise should always be paramount. Whether you’re hooking the caravan to the back of the car and heading to Merimbula or invading France, no one should ever know you’re coming. That’s why you must always begin in the dead of night. The similarities between holidays and ground-based military incursions don’t end there. As kids, not only did holidays begin with us being ripped from our slumber in the dead of night, we were also forced to wear fatigues and camouflage paint. Little wonder people thought we were weird.
Nothing pleased my father more than an early start. It was as though tearing his family out of bed before the sun had begun to think about rising was an achievement on par with memorizing the Encyclopedia Britannica or building a replica of the city of Venice entirely out of used Paddle Pop sticks whilst blindfolded. Ideally, he’d want us to reach Albury by breakfast.
Aside from paramilitary clothing, we were each allowed a bag, our pillow and some kind of personal item to make the long journey ahead seem just that little bit shorter. But there was one item that always travelled with us, whenever we left Tyabb and ventured into the far wider world. As we were buckled into our seats at four o’clock in the morning, our parents would do a quick check. Should we set off without somebody’s toothbrush, we could always buy another one. If someone forgot their pillow, that was just bad luck. We could even leave one of my siblings back in the house and – depending on how far we’d already travelled – it was a fifty-fifty proposition as to whether we’d return. But we never went anywhere without an empty ice cream container.
Once it would have held litres of delicious ice cream. Chances are, it would have been Neapolitan – the most democratic and even-handed of all the ice-cream flavours. But once rinsed, the now-empty ice-cream container would be relocated to the van and re-christened, ‘the Chuck Bucket’ or, ‘the Bucket’ for short.
Oddly enough, ‘the Bucket’ was also the original name given to the Nissan E-20, before the powers that be decided it would be easier to market an affordable people-mover if it sounded like a strain of e-coli rather than something you might water the plants with. The Chuck Bucket, however, served a very different purpose and was always on hand in the event that something should go wrong. That’s because ‘the Bucket’ served one purpose and one purpose only – it existed solely in the event that one us should feel like throwing up.
There is something about long-distance travel that never fails to induce nausea. Sometimes travel sickness is caused by foolishly attempting to read when the road is winding or the surface uneven. On other occasions, we would feel sick because we were forced to consume tablets that were intended to prevent motion sickness but, in an irony that must surely have become apparent during the testing stage, invariably made you want to throw up. Whatever the cause, the Chuck Bucket was always on hand.
The responsibility for demanding the Bucket rested with each individual. In the event that you felt something begin to stir in the pit of your stomach, you were expected to request ‘the Bucket’. Any such request would set off a flurry of activity in which various brothers and sisters would scramble to find the empty ice cream container and move it in to position before the technicolour yawn had a chance to begin. However, a request for the bucket should not be confused with a request to stop the vehicle. Indeed, my father would always plough on, firmly believing that the only circumstance that would necessitate pulling the car over would be to empty the bucket. Until then, it was full steam ahead.
My sister, Rebecca, holds the all-time record in our family. We were heading up to Queensland or driving some other great distance that, by rights, ought to be well beyond a Nissan E-20 and had been woken up thirty-seven minutes after being sent to bed. Our father was muttering something about ‘beating the traffic’ and we were quickly dressed in our fatigues, forced to eat travel sickness tablets and apply camouflage makeup. Safely buckled up, we began the marathon journey. However, we were yet to reach the end of the drive before my sister requested ‘the Bucket’ and proceeded to send the travel sickness tablets back from whence they came. Suffice to say, my father had to pull over the car.
When I eventually bought a car of my own, I made sure there was oil in engine, a spare tyre in the boot and an empty ice-cream container in the backseat. At that time, I had no need for four litres of Neapolitan ice cream. I simply needed a Chuck Bucket of my very own. It seemed quite an adult thing to do. These days, I no longer carry an empty bucket in case of emergency. I doubt my father does either. His ice cream containers now only hold ice cream. As well they should.