How Can I Avoid Crowds During School Holidays?

We learned this one the hard way at Bondi. It was the October long weekend crossing into the spring school holidays, we’d promised the kids the “famous pool by the beach,” and by the time we found parking (twenty minutes, ten dollars, still annoyed about it) the Icebergs pool was more elbow than water. We […]

There’s a message that does the rounds in every parent group about a week before the holidays start. “So what are you doing with the kids this time, camp or vacation care?” Someone always replies with a laughing emoji, because nobody actually knows the difference until they’ve booked the wrong one. I found this out […]

Australian schools break up for around six weeks over Christmas and summer, though the exact number of weeks depends on the state or territory. It’s the longest holiday period of the school year, running from mid-December through to late January or early February. Each Australian state and territory sets its own school calendar, so the […]

My sister-in-law texted me last week. “So when are you guys off again?” Same question, every single holidays, and every single time neither of us actually knows off the top of our head, we’re both just squinting at our phone calendars trying to remember if Term 3 finishes the same week everywhere. It doesn’t. It […]

Six Things Nobody Tells You About Private vs Public School Holidays (Until You’re Living It) 1. You thought the school run was confusing? Try running two different school calendars. My son is at the local public primary. My sister’s two are at a private school forty minutes away. We are both, in theory, adults capable […]

New South Wales gets seven weeks off. Victoria gets five and a half. Same country, same season, nearly two weeks apart, and nobody warns you about that until you’ve already tried to plan something around it. I found this out the annoying way, trying to line up a week at my parents’ place with when […]

Every school holidays, I see the same question pop up in parent groups: can I just book personal leave to cover the break, rather than eating into my annual leave? I get why people ask. Annual leave never quite stretches across four holiday periods a year, and personal leave is just sitting there. It feels […]

School holidays come around fast, and for working parents they usually mean the same juggle: book a holiday program, pay the invoice, and get back to work knowing the kids are looked after. It seems fair to assume that cost should count as a work expense at tax time. It does not, and the reason […]

We made our first boredom jar a couple of school holidays ago. I was tired of being asked what there was to do before I’d even had a coffee, so I figured it was worth trying properly instead of just saying “I’ll think of something” for the tenth time that morning. A boredom jar is […]

You know that feeling in the last week of term when you glance at the calendar and your stomach drops a little? Not because you don’t love having the kids around. Because you’ve just done the maths and the numbers don’t love you back. I’ve been the one-income household for a while now, and school […]