My Mum and I Bicker on Holiday – Somewhere in the Flinders Ranges, We Broke the Pattern

Three days on foot through the Flinders Ranges left Rosamund and her Mum with nowhere to escape each other, or their old habits. But somewhere between the steep climbs and nights under the stars, something was admitted that Rosamund never expected.

We Are Explorers acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the Country on which this adventure takes place, who have occupied and cared for the lands, waters, and their inhabitants for thousands of years. We pay our respects to them and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

Travel is one of the languages my mum and I share. Sandra, my adventurous 71-year-old mum, grew up in a remote part of New Zealand, and has never needed much persuading to go anywhere. She’s skied black runs since she was a teenager, cycled from Germany to Hungary, volunteered in Cambodia, and swam 20km across the Indian Ocean.

I get my adventurous spirit from her. Together, we’ve travelled through India, Morocco, Spain, Canada, France and, of course, Aotearoa. Many of my happiest memories with her belong to those trips.

We are close. But we also know exactly how to annoy each other. On holiday, a missed remark or impatient tone can send us sliding into old roles. One minute, we’re two women travelling together. Next, we’re mother and teenage daughter, bickering over something neither of us will remember later.

A few months ago, Mum and I made a last-minute decision to hike 45km through the Flinders Ranges. Within days, we joined the Arkaba Walk, a three-day guided hike with two nights in swags and no way to escape.

Into the Ranges

On the first morning, Mum and I climbed into one of Arkaba’s open-top safari vehicles. It carried our small group to the starting point inside Ikara-Wilpena Pound, the vast natural amphitheatre at the heart of the Flinders Ranges.

We adjusted our packs, picked up our poles, and set off side-by-side across the broad, mostly flat basin. We followed red dirt tracks through mallee and native pine. Emus crossed the plains. Kangaroos and wallabies watched from the scrub. The clean smell of eucalyptus was occasionally interrupted by the pong of a dead kangaroo.

The terrain was gentle, at least to begin with. Being together for many uninterrupted hours wasn’t. Against all that space, the things we found to bicker about were absurdly small.

Often, it began with Mum saying, ‘What?’. Her hearing isn’t what it once was, although I swear she sometimes asks before I’ve even finished speaking. I repeat myself, louder and less graciously. She bristles at my tone. I feel unheard; she feels unfairly snapped at. Within seconds, the original sentence is beside the point.

Other times, it was the small routines of camp. Mum is brisk and practical, up early and ready to go. I take longer to surface and tend to potter. One evening at camp, this played out over the shower.

The evening was freezing, I couldn’t work out how the shower worked and I kept putting it off. By the time I finally went, it was nearly dark. Then I realised I’d forgotten my towel. I called out for Mum to bring it. She did, but not without making her irritation clear in front of the other hikers.

I was cold, naked, and embarrassed. She was tired and annoyed at having to rescue me from an entirely avoidable situation. The towel was not really the issue. It rarely is.

Walking It Off

Over the next two days, the bickering began to lose momentum. It was hard to hold a grudge while picking our way over loose rock for seven hours or watching the ranges turn rust red in the afternoon light.

Walking stripped the days back to a few immediate concerns: water, food, our footing, and the next hill. Conversation came and went. Sometimes Mum and I walked together; sometimes the track pushed us into single file. Silence no longer felt loaded. Often, we were simply saving our breath.

We were also becoming part of the group. Our guides, Natalie and Mon, walked with us each day, filling our heads with stories about the ranges: its animals and plants, its geology and its long human history.

The other walkers brought their own worlds with them. There was a Melbourne couple in their 50s with excellent taste in music and movies, a married pair of retired doctors who’d both become priests, and a warm widow travelling alone. Over dinner, conversation ranged across politics, current affairs, philosophy, films, and music.

With so much to absorb and so many other voices in the mix, Mum and I were no longer each other’s sole focus. Our attention turned outwards. We listened more and picked at each other less.

By the second day, we were waiting for one another, sharing snacks and celebrating each climb. Some of the hills were so steep it felt as though we were face-to-face with the mountain. Mum often fell towards the back. Her knee was sore and she slowed on the hills, but she never gave up. She planted her poles, rested when she needed to, and kept moving towards the ridge.

I was proud of her, not because she made it look easy, but because she kept going when it wasn’t. At 71, she was still the woman who agrees to a trip without hesitation.

By evening, we pulled off our boots, ate beside the fire, and climbed into our swags. Above us, stars crowded the sky. I could hear Mum shifting nearby in the dark, close enough that neither of us needed to say anything.

After days of walking side by side, the old roles had loosened. Mum and I were two walkers, tired, grubby, and getting through it with everyone else.

By the Fire

By the final night, the difficult kilometres were behind us. We sat around the campfire with the other walkers, no longer quite strangers after three days of shared exertion.

I rested my head on Mum’s shoulder. One of the priests noticed us and spoke of her own mother, whom she still missed. How special it was, she said, simply to have a mum.

The comment settled over us. For all the roles we inhabited and all the ways we could misread each other, Mum was still here. I could still rest my head on her shoulder. The recognition passed between us without discussion.

The priest then spoke warmly about her son: the depth of their bond, how much they had in common, and the closeness she felt to him. It was the kind of unguarded declaration that can be easier to receive when it comes from somebody else’s mother.

Mum looked at me. ‘That’s how I feel about you’, she said. Her words surprised me, not because I doubted her love, but because we seldom speak in such direct terms. Affection between us more often arrives as humour, advice, or concern. Even the bickering may be a distorted expression of intimacy, sharpened by how much the relationship matters.

There was nothing to reconcile. We’d always been close. Yet for a moment I could see the relationship without the static of being mother and daughter: the bond beneath the friction, and the extent to which my own nature had begun with hers.

Three days in the ranges didn’t cure our bickering. The old pattern will return, most likely in an airport or over dinner plans. But it’s no longer the only one I recognise. There’s also Sandra at 71, setting out without hesitation; the two of us moving through ancient country; my head resting on her shoulder beside the fire.

The walk had quietened us long enough to hear what was there all along.