Weekly family-outings: worth the effort!

My family and I have just returned from our ‘Sunday family-outing' which this week was hiking along trails at Waterfall Gully, in the Adelaide foothills.


We are a busy family of six - four children (aged 4 - 17 years), my husband, David, and me - and I've found that if we don't plan a regular outing of together-time each week - then it usually doesn't happen. Ad hoc doesn't work for us. Laziness and ‘next week' excuses - work more naturally, unfortunately.


However, with discipline, has come routine - and with our weekly family outings have come many happy times and lovely memories of Sundays together.


Family outings are something completely different from the routine of daily life. They push us out of our comfort zones and, as D. H. Lawrence once wrote, out from the ‘suffocating comfort' of our homes. We throw ourselves out the front door , every Sunday, and into adventures and excitement and challenges: on long hikes up hilly terrains with glorious views; into beach adventures on surf-mats and in kayaks; on bike rides along river-side bikeways or beside the ocean; on  boardwalks along cliff-tops overlooking the sea; to great new playgrounds (a wonderful playground for anyone in Adelaide - discovered last Sunday on a family outing - is the 'Bonython Playground' in the north-west parklands adjacent to the river Torrens. Fantastic fun for young and older children! And great coffee!).



Another great consequence of our family-outings has been that they have helped bring our children closer together as friends - more than just being siblings. Siblings don't always get-along and, in our family, my older two children are now closer and fight less than they used to - since we began our weekly family-outings about three years ago. Maybe helping each other, while on our excursions, and experiencing many great times together, has had the effect of helping them to see each other in a new light, and maybe they've learned to appreciate each other more. Either way, they're really good friends now - and that wasn't always the case.


Modern family life is often busy and leisure times can be quite solitary.  With this combination - there is the potential for  family members to become relatively  detached from each other - not only by walls and doors - but by the isolation that comes with modern recreational activities:  computer games, television, smart phones,  iPads,  iPods, and so forth.  


In times long past - before computers and televisions and even radios - families would more often sit together, at the end of their long working days, and talk beside the fireplace, play the piano and sing songs together, go down to the beach or into the backyard and sleep under the stars on hot nights, or engage in lively discussions over nightly family dinners around large dining-tables. These things rarely happen today for many families - and thus the importance of scheduling 'quality-time' together on a regular basis.  To reconnect and have fun together.



Alas, in my family, we don't use fireplaces (well only occasionally when we feel like toasting marshmellows on long sticks), we don't play pianos (although we do play guitars - just not that well) and, thank God, we don't sing songs together (as we are all tone-deaf), we don't sleep under the stars (I hate the mozzies), and, unfortunately, meals are usually dashed-together ‘frozen packet-food’affairs - thrown into the microwave as I exclaim: '5 minutes to reheat this?!! Who's got that sort of time?!'    At other times, in my house, similar frozen packet-food is thrown into my gas-oven and then it is usually forgotten - until the smoke detector reminds me that it's still in there.

'What’s that noise?' is usually my first response, as I hear the smoke detector screaming at me from the kitchen. I sit for a while, wondering if the noise is coming from next door or up the street … and then it all comes back to me … and I race up the passage to the kitchen, throw open the oven door, get hit in the face with a cloud of grey smoke and the smell of burning charcoal as I desperately pull from the oven the blackened remains of whatever it was that I tossed in there ... so long ago. 

I can usually scrape off the burnt bits and save some of the remains - sort of! Cooking is not my favourite sport (It is a sort-of sport for me - as it usually involves running as fast as I can to the kitchen at some stage in the process).

I’m also ashamed to admit that sitting around a large family dinner-table every night is not something my family have made a habit of doing. We usually sit in front of the lounge room television, with plates on our knees, to eat our meals. About once or twice a week (on a good week) we sit at the dining-table for dinner and eat spaghetti bolognese. (Roast chicken with vege's - at Christmas).


So, our Sunday outings are extra special for us, as a family, because we have no other time each week when we are together for a number of hours - just being together, and really talking and having fun ... together.


A recent Australian study, reported in the Daily Mail - Australia (July 15th 2013) - showed that my busy family are similar to many other Australian families who are also  finding it hard to spend significant quality time together.  


In the study  2000 Australian families were surveyed.  The results  showed  that  families spend a total of only 8 hours each week together with their children - 2hours and 20 minutes each day on weekends, and only an average of 36 minutes each day on week days.


Even then, 70% of the families surveyed said that the time they spent with their children was in silence in front of the television, or reading, or playing computer games, or they had been just too tired to talk.


More than 50% said that the only real time that they got to spend quality-time together was when they were away from the house on a holiday - far from the distractions at home. Some 56% of those surveyed said that they booked a holiday purely to get some real quality-time with their family without the demands of daily life.


The top 10 reasons that parents gave for not getting enough quality family time was:

1. My partner and I work long hours

2. We spend our evenings and weekends busy with house-hold chores

3. The children are at school when I'm not working

4. The children are often watching television

5. My partner and I work anti-social hours

6. The children are often playing computer games

7. The children are at an age where they don't really want to spend time with us

8. The children are often out with their friends

9. The children spend their evenings studying

10. We spend a lot of time at various sports/after school clubs separately


I can relate to these situations - as my husband and I, between us, work 6 days per week. Our only full-day off, where we the whole family are all together at home, is Sunday. And this is why we chose Sundays for family-outings.


Also, our older two children are now teenagers (14 and 17 years old) - but I've found that they still really enjoy our family-outings together, and they schedule their other activities around them. Maybe, starting the family-outings when they were  pre-teens has helped them to want to continue these family activities as teenagers.  Something for others to consider.



Later, when our children become adults, I hope that we can morph our ‘family-Sunday outings’ into something else: 'Sunday bar-b-ques' with their families over, or drop-in coffee morning-teas or lunches on week-ends, or Sunday lunch roasts (if I take cooking lessons - or buy a cooked chicken - maybe). We'll see. We'll adapt. 


But I think it would be lovely for us to always make time for each other - together - somehow.  We'll just need to remember to stay mindful of how important that is.  


I think anyone considering organising weekly or fortnightly family-outings - will also find them well worth the effort.




* * *


Now for a little description (and hopefully a little inspiration for anyone reading this to get out and about) of our walk in Waterfall Gully in the beautiful Adelaide foothills today:



                                              Waterfall Gully (in the Adelaide foothills):


We last came to Waterfall Gully a few weeks ago. The gully was then orange and red and yellow with autumn leaves flaming on laden branches . Dry grass painted the gully floor and the steep hillsides with a golden brush - the last vestige of the summer before the advancing winter swept it away completely in a wash of green. The weather was warm then: 23C. It was our Indian summer. Butterflies still danced along the trails, birds darted between the tree tops or sang a constant chorus, and the creek trickled peacefully between dry boulders and rocks.

Our children sat at the water's edge, and threw pebbles into the glassy pools. They hung their legs over rocky embankments and they swished their bare feet in the cool water. Ripples expanded lazily from myriad epicentres as each missile reached its target with a loud ‘plonk’. Sunshine filled the gully with a soft golden light or, in other areas, it filtered between a fluttering canopy of leaves, in streaks of brightness which dissolved before reaching the ground. Looking directly overhead we admired the azure sky which stretched endlessly upward, beyond the towering walls of the gully.

Back then, we wandered along the dusty trails in sandles and t-shirts and cotton shorts and floaty summer-skirts. This place was warm and peaceful and beautiful ... when we last came here.


Now, returning once more, it is something different. It is cold and still and sleeping. Although, in its wintery way ... it is still beautiful. The quiet creek has become a torrent: swollen, gushing, thunderous. It roars and bubbles as it races between rocks and attacks the boundaries of its muddy confines. Frogs croak loudly above the noise from the wild water, and only occasionally birds can be heard calling from the tree-tops high above our heads. The gully is in shadow now - as the northern sun hides behind the cliff-tops. The sky has now only the pretence of a summer day - with its clear blue face providing no substantial warmth. The air is biting-cold. It burns our nostrils as we breath. It freezes our finger-tips and our noses. It tingles on our cheeks and it invigorates our souls - which had felt stale and smothered from long periods indoors.

Thick jumpers and scarves are pulled high around our necks. Woollen hats, long pants, thick socks, and leather shoes stave off the cold and protect us from this unforgiving weather.

The deciduous trees are now mostly bare with their black gnarled branches twisting and reaching upward into the empty sky . The Australian eucalypts have retained their olive-green folliage and, along with the dense expanse of ferns, the tangled web of blackberry bushes, and the thick long grass, the gully is washed a lush wintery-green. This verdant monochrome is only interupted by a sprinkling of tiny yellow sour-sobs, which hint at a promise of spring, and the ghostly-white of eucalypt tree-trunks and branches rising elegantly from the hillsides - like fine oil-painting brush-strokes in a green watercolour landscape.

Hiking higher into the hills, we come to an impasse where the trail crosses the swollen rushing creek. We accept the challenge presented to us, and, balancing on loose rocks and dead, blackened tree branches, we manage to hop and balance and wobble and leap to the trail on the other side. Less sturdy folk turn back - athough most don't. David carries our four year old son across. Ollie waves and squeals with delight at the adventure of it all.

Finally, after forty minutes of trekking up into the hills of the gully, we turn around and walk back down toward our car - now far away - beyond the forest in which we find ourselves. The middle two children, 14 year old Ethan and 11 year old Liana, have run back down the path and we don’t see them again until we get back to the car, half an hour later.

David and Bella, our 17 year old, chat about politics and physics and movies … They laugh and create happy memories to be recalled years from now. Four year old Ollie holds my hand. I don't want him to fall over - partly because he's wearing my good new jumper - with the long sleeves rolled right up (he was cold) - and he's chatting all the way down the hillside trail- as only a four year old would: 
'Mum, do you know what can break metal?' 
'No, Ollie'. 
'Lava could, mummy!' (like lava is the obvious answer). 'Mummy, do you know what would break material?' 
'Scissors?' 
'Yes - but also lava would!' he says.  'Mum, do you know what would break a house?' 
'Lava?' I ask. 
'YES! Good mum! Lava would'. 

He’s thrilled that he is teaching me something this time. I mustn't laugh. He hates it when we laugh at him. Although, I do tell him that if I need to cut some material in the future - I must remember to get some 'lava'. 
'Yes!' he says quite seriously, and pleased that he’s been able to help me with this potential conundrum.

We get back to our car, at the bottom of the hill, parked along the roadside.The missing two  children are waiting there for us - happy and red-cheeked and excited. We get into the warm car and remove scarves and hats and jackets. We all agree on our next stop. Macca's. Hot coffee. A late lunch. Laughter and conversations and some more serious discussions about ... whatever the children, or we, think is important.

Ollie's out in the playground after making 'scary-creatures’ with his chicken-nuggets, chips and tomato-sauce painted onto their ‘scary-nugget faces' .

A lovely winter afternoon for the six of us. Another lovely ‘Sunday family-outing’.



I hope I may have inspired even one person to venture out into the world and try something new and fun and invigorating and challenging ... and then finish up with a lovely hot coffee and some lovely conversations and ... another happy memory to add to your collection... of happy memories ... and maybe a few jokes.


Have a nice week - whatever you choose to do.