Dad Mode Activated

After a small but welcome financial windfall the girls and I had a lovely holiday about 10 years ago, spending about two weeks over in Queensland. The second half of the trip was spent with my beloved Auntie and Uncle at the house on the hill in the relaxing wilderness of the Noosa Heads/Tewantin hinterland and we had a wonderful time eating, drinking and bonding.

The first half was just as much fun but very different. After a gruelling night on the redeye from Perth we checked into a high rise hotel in Burleigh Heads and slept it off all morning. For the rest of the week it was our home base for spending every day at the Gold Coast theme parks (Movie World, DreamWorld, etc).

Now, if you spent any time with me when I was a kid or a teenager you'll know I was a bit of a wimp. I didn't like horror movies, my hand puppet of The Count from Sesame Street gave me nightmares so badly we eventually had to get rid of it and I certainly never liked roller coasters. When Australia's Wonderland opened in Badgery's Creek in the mid 80s I went on the little roller coaster up at the top of the Park once (The Beastie) and that was enough – I gave the main one down the bottom near the highway (The Bush Beast) a very wide berth.

So there was a little bit of concerned debate that went into how we'd manage theme park rides, because Emily was 14 and she was completely different from me at that age. She wanted to go on every roller coaster, the thing that shoots along a track, goes vertically up a tall spire and backwards again, the thing where you sit in a chair attached to a flimsy little frame and it drops down the same spire from about 200 feet up. Stuff that nearly made me want to pass out just watching videos of them on YouTube.

For a little while we even considered telling her we'd pay for one of her little friends to come with us so she'd have someone to go on all the rides with just so I didn't have to. But at some stage I realised that because I wasn't a little boy or a teenager at Wonderland or the Easter Show but a father and husband in my mid thirties I just had to just man the hell up and go on everything she wanted to because it was her holiday too.

The reason I came to that realisation was because of another story from much further back that I always remember.

It was probably my second or third trip to Wonderland. The first time I ever went wasn't long after it had opened in 1986. The same beloved Auntie from the story above was down visiting along with my cousins Lynda and Janelle, David and Mum were obviously there, and I think I remember Pam, Robin, Matt and Brad being there. For some reason I remember Auntie Lorna being there even though it probably wasn't her kind of thing, so that meant Uncle Sid and Jacqui were probably there too.

We all split into groups and Janelle and I spent most of our time together in that big mushroom shaped thing with the chairs hanging on chains that swings around. I don't remember but she might not have liked big rides either so she was the perfect ride partner.

But the day I'm thinking of Uncle Sid was definitely there because he was walking around filming everything with his little 16mm camera, having us all in stitches with his very politically incorrect sense of humour. Frank didn't often do stuff like that with everyone through the day because he worked so much, but he was there too. If Sid was there Lorna undoubtedly was and Jacqui definitely was, because when it came time to go on the big roller coaster down the bottom of the park I might otherwise have been the natural ridemate to go in it with her.

Whether anyone asked me and I said something like 'hell no' or I'd been making it quite clear for a week beforehand there was no way I was going near it (more likely) I can't remember. But of all people, Frank was the one who stepped up and offered to go on it with her.

We all stood there waiting for them to come off the ride, and after they got to the front of the queue we happened to see the trains they were in. It shot out from the loading platform, started that rickety climb up the first big hill (that clattering metal sound still gives me hives), got near the top... and stopped.

A few minutes later it still hadn't moved. Time always moves slower when you're a kid so it might have only been ten minutes, but it felt like they were up there for more than half an hour not moving. Eventually I think we saw people who worked on the ride walk up the steps beside the track to the top, but either way everyone climbed out, walked back down and came out to explain to the various friends and family waiting outside that it had broken down.

I still remember Frank going on the ride with Jacqui with his own inimitable style – complete calm, total agreement and without hesitation if it meant doing something for family. I'm sure that, being a human being, he was scared of something. I was terrified of storms, roller coasters, fireworks... the list seems endless. I've bought some of those fears into adulthood and I know I'm only partly successful at hiding them. And being on a roller coaster that broke down right near the top of the scariest drop would have been enough to give me a coronary.

But when I look back on what Dad was like I'm slightly in awe of him. If he was ever scared of anything I never saw it, just like I don't remember hearing him ever lose his temper or so much as raise his voice. When it came time to go on the biggest, scariest roller coaster in the Southern Hemisphere because my cousin wouldn't have anyone to go on it with otherwise, he didn't even blink.

I can't remember if I consciously thought of that story when it came time to figure out how Emily would be able to go on all the scary rides when we went on our holiday decades later, but I certainly think part of what I internalised from that experience helped me decide. I realised that when a daughter, niece or kid in the family wants to go on all the scary rides at the theme park and there's nobody else around to accompany them, that's just what you do when you're a Dad.

It's a strange thing to attribute to Frank unknowingly teaching me how to be a father, but you realise at some point that life isn't about grand, telegraphed gestures or declarations that are easy to spot. It's about these little instances where we hardly even think about what we do, but that someone might be watching and might be shaped by it years into the future, even without them knowing.

So maybe because she really did want it or maybe just to torture me because she had it within her power, Emily wanted to go on every single frigging thing in all four theme parks we went to – the biggest, scariest most inhumane engineering monstrosities ever dreamed up. And I went on every one of them. I dangled 200 feet up on that tiny seat waiting to be dropped back to the ground, my eyes fixed on the upper middle distance so I couldn't see the rest of the park around us, the tops of any trees and certainly not the ground.

I shot up the side of the same spire on the thing that goes 200mph, I was flung upside down, inside out and every which way while she screamed with delight beside me and I wondered if I might lose my last four meals all over the people on the ground below. By the time we went on the Corkscrew at Seaworld towards the end of the fourth day I barely blinked because I'd already been on so much worse.

And I climbed out from being locked in cars or chairs or contraptions that had tossed me in every direction on legs that barely worked and smiled as she started talking about the next bout of terror stricken suffering I had to endure, because Frank taught me that's just what you do when you're a Dad.