Me, my son and the gap year I crashed: what's working (and what's not)

Times

12 hours ago

It's an early start today in Brisbane, on my gap-year-in-a-week alongside my 18-year-old son, Rider, and we have a plane to catch. I give him an alarm call, but in the room next door he's (unexpectedly) way ahead of me. There's no time for breakfast so the stylish Crystalbrook Vincent hotel sorts us coffee and croissants to go. Shame. I would have happily stayed in bed until 11am staring at the extraordinary view of Brisbane Bridge.
By 9.30am, after a Qantas flight from Brisbane's domestic terminal ('My first plane with propellers!' Rider says), we're at Hervey Bay, on the Sunshine Coast 180 miles north of Brisbane. From the nearby SeaLink terminal at River Heads it's a 50-minute ferry ride across the Great Sandy Strait to the Kingfisher Bay eco-tourism resort on K'Gari, the world's largest sand island.
Formerly known as Fraser Island, K'Gari (the 'K' is silent) is famous for its beach-dwelling dingoes and Top Gear-inspired 4×4 safaris. Despite its popularity as a holiday destination, here nature retains the upper hand: there's a metre-long reptile cruising the tables for lunch leftovers (known colloquially as a tree goanna, though technically it's a lace monitor lizard). Rider is wary: 'Uncle Jonny [my Aussie 'little' brother] says they're the only Aussie creature he's still scared of.' Tree goannas have notoriously poor oral hygiene and a nip can send you to hospital, so we leave this one to his chips.
For those who aren't driving a high-clearance 4×4, it's worth joining an all-day tour on the resort's custom-built super-bouncy coaches. We set off the following morning with a driver who is seriously multitasking: combining a nonstop running commentary on the flora and fauna while towing another coach out of a sticky spot. When traffic backs up on a two-way sandy 'road' the width of an English country lane, we stop again to hoick a stranded car out of a rut. Our driver says many people hire suboptimal 4x4s that can't hack the terrain, with inevitable wheel-spinning results.
Back on the 'road', we meander through Pile Valley's extraordinary subtropical rainforest, admiring the ancient Satinay trees and giant palms. On the return leg some of us take a short walk through the forest, spotting a tiny baby Carpet Python curled around a stick, happily nonvenomous. After a lunch break we head to 75 Mile beach, where we're lucky to spot a lone dingo ambling against the backdrop of the Pacific. This is not a swimming spot — currents and sharks see to that — but it's popular for beach fishing, barbies, camping and taking selfies against the rusted wreck of the SS Maheno or while floating down the freshwater Eli Creek in rubber rings.
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Eventually we arrive inland for tea and swimming at the gorgeous Lake McKenzie, with its extra-fine white silica sand and mild water. I fall into conversation with a British family. The mum (a doctor), dad (in finance) and their two young kids had moved to Australia a few years back but returned to the UK shortly after lockdown. They've pulled the kids out of their school for an extended Easter break back in Oz and, this time, plan to stay. 'It's a difficult decision but the quality of life here is just so …' Dad tails off, as the kids call for him to come into the lake. 'Have a lovely life!' I shout after him as he rejoins his family. I'm momentarily wistful for those holiday moments with young kids; we never appreciate how precious and fleeting they are until they're gone.
We've had a fun day, however a coach tour is never the go-to for an 18-year-old. In truth it wouldn't be mine either, so when I catch Rider eyeing-up a convoy of 4x4s full of teenagers exuding gap-year-party vibes I ask him if he's really OK doing this stuff with his 61-year-old mum? 'One hundred per cent. I just really want to come back here sometime, with my mates,' he says.
That evening we eat at the resort's very good Asian fusion restaurant, Dune, before heading to watch Illumina, a 30-minute alfresco immersive light, lasers and music show. It's beautiful — and surprisingly moving. Woven with dramatic First Australian dreamtime imagery and mythology, it's also the perfect way to end our day.
If you've been watching the hit BBC1 series Race Across the World you'll have followed the emotional/physical journey of the winners — fellow sixtysomething mum, Caroline, and her 21-year-old son, Tom. Though it remains strong, the mother-son bond I have with Rider has also been tested since the sudden, accidental death of his older brother in September 2023. Unlike RATW's Tom, however, Rider was never an only child. Losing Jackson has completely reshaped the family dynamic because, even in his absence, his presence remains huge and it always will. Rider's own strength has been inspiring, yet I know that navigating my loss and keeping other relationships intact and my head above metaphorical waters is the hardest work of what's left of my lifetime.
So I'd purposefully left it five months before joining Rider in Australia. We both needed space to deal with ourselves without having to accommodate each other: Rider deserved to find a route for his future that wasn't defined by being the charismatic Jackson's 'little brother', while I needed to build a different life around the unanticipated void my eldest son's death had now created.
Waking very early the next morning, I watched the sunrise from my balcony, hoping these magical shared experiences would provide enough glue to help me and Rider through a future that will, inevitably, be spent further apart.Kathryn Flett is spending a month travelling in Australia, and crashing her son's gap year. Read more at thetimes.com/travel. She was a guest of Tourism and Events Queensland (queensland.com)