I have a child whose sole interest has been aviation for around two years.
So, when there’s a biennial international air show held just two-and-a-half-hours’ drive from home, I felt it would be cruel not to take him.
Of course, relieving my savings account of 600 bucks, sitting in two 90-minute traffic jams and spending two long days getting sunburned, windswept and bathed in dust on the weekend after what was already a hectic week could be considered another variety of cruelty if pondered from a different angle.
But, you hear people use the corny phrase “The things we do for our kids” over and again.
As well-worn as it is, this one resonated hard this past weekend as exhaustion stalked my every move at Avalon’s Australian International Airshow.
After a late night Friday celebrating at my eldest son’s debutante ball — where we heard the distressing news pilot Glenn Collins had been critically injured when his plane crashed at the event earlier that day, and concerning conversation about protests on site we didn’t yet know the nature of — we checked for updates on Saturday morning before making the drive south.
Part of me might have been hoping it was cancelled for my own rest’s sake, but a larger part of me would have been gutted for my 14-year-old, who’d barely slept all week in excited anticipation.
After seeing the pilot’s condition had improved from critical to serious and learning the protestors were calling for peace and weren’t likely to turn violent themselves, we were comfortable to still attend, along with more than 200,000 others who did across the six-day event.
As a directionally challenged human, who can’t read maps very well (I remember the days of turning a Melways in 360-degree motions to align with whichever direction I was heading), these kinds of events activate anxiety when traffic congestion makes it hard to move across multi-lane freeways in unfamiliar locales.
But we got there the first day without a single wrong turn — it just took 90 minutes in air-show traffic from the freeway to the airport, which on a normal day might have taken only 10.
The parking at Avalon was in big, wide, dusty and dry paddocks adjacent to the airport, where convoys of cars sprayed dust into the air turning the landscape into desert storm scenes.
I felt like Max Rockatansky being pursued by war boys in a scene from Max Max.
We parked in low-visibility as the dust swirled and I looked for landmarks to concrete into my memory so we’d find our way back.
I even texted myself my location on Google maps, but discovered at the end of the day the location was only live for one hour. What an idiot.
Once upon a time, when I only had myself to worry about, spontaneity, getting lost and winging it were all part of the adventure.
As a parent though, the responsibility to have your ducks in a row looms large.
And as a single parent of three, 24/7/365, who can’t pass a baton, or at least one of the reins to another grown-up to share the load, the pressure feels intense in certain situations.
One such being when my little ‘avgeek’ (a name he calls himself, so I’m permitted to also) would not leave his prime fenceline position on our second day there when the six-dollar bottle of water I’d downed throughout the morning had me needing the loo.
I wasn’t keen on leaving him alone in a crowd that size, especially when messages were taking hours to send, if they were getting through at all.
Alas, I sat in my discomfort and growing hunger until his aviation appetite was satisfied.
The things we do for our kids.
We watched while all manner of aircraft took to the sky, flying low, showing their capabilities, climbing, rolling, nose-diving, letting off flares, forming patterns, performing stunts, displaying military procedures and racing against Red Bull Supercars on runways.
F35 fighter jets momentarily deafened anyone not wearing ear protection and shook the earth on which we stood.
It truly was exhilarating stuff and I defy anyone not to have gotten something out of an event like this, whether they’re a plane nut or not.
There were onsite displays, exhibitions, museums, simulators and come-and-try stations.
There were freebies, carnival rides and a grandstand for those who wanted to pay premium pricing for preferred seating.
And while 65 bucks for a car park out in ‘the desert’ each day was a bit rich, the show’s organisers, at 16 events in, have gotten their park-and-ride and train-shuttle operations down pat.
Everything was well-signed, well-explained, and while there were large crowds lining up at gates, transport stops and a high volume of road traffic that moved slowly, at least everything kept moving.
But at the end of the day — specifically that second day — in the car trip on the way back to Shepparton in the dark on Sunday night, my son looked at me starry-eyed and said: “I think I just had the best day I’ve ever had in my life.”
And this is why we do the things we do for our kids.
Our weekend was both everything plane and nothing plain.
Thank the heavens (aka skies) this event only flies around once every two years.