What is it that brings family together? What is the mystical ingredient that allows some to be the best of friends, while others grit teeth through even the few hours per year they must toil through in the holiday season.

In the first wee hours of the morning of January 1st (which also happens to be Hudson’s birthday), we rose – bleary-eyed – and tumbled onto a plane to the Gold Coast. Of course, flying with kids is never really that simple and there were many hairy moments along the way – almost missing our flight, discovering that the base of our pram had been lost in transit, requiring us to lug only the most inconvenient of parts along for the journey. We ploughed through our emergency stash of lollies on the flight, tossed between us a writhing Harvey who couldn’t understand why the beckoning aisle of the plane couldn’t be his personal playground and made it – just – to the other side.

I grew up travelling to the rollicking hills behind Byron Bay (although we usually did it the long way), alternating Christmases between our house, Tumbarumba (where my grandparents lived) and the picturesque property where Aunty Louise, Uncle Mark and my cousins spent their days. After the brief initial period of hiding behind the legs of our respective parents, we emerged to become the best of friends – indulging in nightly sleepovers with midnight snacks, concocting wild and wonderful plays to torture the parents with, building cubby houses on top of the water tank, and participating in the outlandish treasure hunts that my uncle dreamed up. These memories are among my most vivid and when the chance came to recreate them for my own kids, I leaped at the chance.

There was a moment before we approached the palm-lined driveway where I hesitated. Was I setting myself up? Would the experience as a parent be ultimately completely different, diluting the magic that I so nostalgically held on to?

There were 29 of us in total. Fifteen staying with my Aunt and Uncle, and the rest holed up in various B&B’s around the area. The Lumleys planned the four days with the perfect balance of structure and relaxation – the first night (my highlight) bursting into life with a Brazilian barbeque. If you have never tasted the glories of marinated, smoky meat melting in your mouth right from the coals, I would be so bold to say, you haven’t lived. Jordan (and the rest of the team) outdid themselves, with enough mouth-watering offerings to feed twice the crowd we were. I realised in the midst of that moment – with children acquainting themselves not unlike we used to do, careening around on scooters in the hazy twilight – that I needn’t have worried about the magic. It still hummed insistently.

There were times when the magic was muted – with the struggle to manage the moods and whims of our eldest, the sticky heat of the nights and the restlessness of our children lending to more tossing than sleep, the fraying of tempers, and the inevitable hour it took to just load our crew into the car. Miscommunications, irritation, a gravy that couldn’t be rescued. We took solace in naps, passed the baton back and forth, and hoped for clear skies when we woke up.

We feasted and swam – in the rich bronze waters of a tea tree lake and the crystal brilliance of the ocean. Some trekked to the Byron Bay lighthouse, others threw themselves into the epically constructed obstacle course that brought the inner ninja to the surface. We picnicked at The Farm, sampled some of the best coffee I have ever experienced, and lazed on the outdoor couch watching children whizz past as the daylight faded to dusk. When the children finally collapsed we played boardgames and caught up – talking everything from parenting to the Enneagram. Relationships were strengthened and renewed, Grandma sat serenely in her reclining chair, no doubt wondering at the magnitude of life in one room that ultimately originated from her. Dave and I escaped for a romantic afternoon to Bangalow, strolling the streets with sudden ease when we didn’t have to perform a head check every few seconds.

When the moment came to leave, we did so reluctantly and with many backwards glances. It isn’t often that you get the opportunity to pass on the same nostalgic experiences to your children, but I suspect the magic has woven its way deep into their bones too.

Family can be a complicated beast. Yet there is something about the experience of doing life together for segments of time that lends itself to depth of relationship. Over the years, in the hours upon hours I spent with my cousins, I came to respect and admire them, thoroughly enjoy their company and count them (and now their partners) as dear friends. My Aunty is one of the people I admire most in the world, her generosity and patience is painted with the fire of a warrior in the best possible way. She is serene and graceful, passionate and humble. Even my Uncle, who prefers to do life on his own terms, features vibrantly in his happier moments, a beacon of what it means to pursue your passions and be unashamedly yourself.

The cloistered cubicles of our existence lend themselves to looking suspiciously on those who surround us – the promise of intimacy and connection not quite enough to prompt us to yield to the mess and chaos of a shared reality. But in the shutting away, we lose something of ourselves, a shimmering cog that yearns to be part of a larger whole.

We can’t shift the mores of our culture overnight – and surrendering to the uncertainty of living wholly in community scares me more than a little – but trips like these do make me ponder. At the very least, I now know that if my children decide to settle in different locations down the track, I can hold onto this notion – that our expeditions to visit and spend time with them have every promise of leading to deeper, richer relationships.

For now, we relish the memories and plan our next adventures. For life comes to its fullness when we do it hand in hand.