The heist

In the week before Christmas, on a single day, I planned to: take a boy to daycare, do a drop off at the domestic airport, pack and move out of a two bedroom apartment, fit a home worth of boxes into a 3m x 3m x 2m storage locker, pack the car for a 4 week holiday, get a boy back from daycare, do a PCR test at the international airport and start an interstate road trip*. If I could pull it off, the whole thing would be a heist. ​

*to be fair the apartment was half packed and moved already and the first leg of the drive was only up to Taree (3.5hours), but still. Also there was a sausage dog. 
 

We woke up at 5:30am because the little girl is 10 weeks old and not aware that there was a heist on the cards which required the sharp minds and clear thinking provided by a full night’s sleep. Bags were packed for daycare and the airport, breakfast was cobbled together from a quarter packed kitchen devoid of milk and bread, then we boosted out the door.  

The boy got dropped off and said a reluctant good bye to his mother and sister. He had wanted to fly with them, however I’d spent weeks on a ‘road trips are cool’ campaign to spare Dani the double child, COVID era Christmas flight. 

From daycare we shot to the airport and made it in time. With masks wedged firmly over our faces we checked the car capsule and the girls disappeared through security and onto their own story. I ran through the terminal and carpark knowing that now the race was on to get out of the apartment and onto the road. Also at some point I needed to get the boy, the grandpa and myself swabbed. 

We slam packed 8 boxes of kitchen, laundry, bathroom and bedroom gear. The miscellaneous items from the back of the cupboards kept coming as they invariably always seem to at the tail end of a house pack up. I ran to the hire van and returned for the first critical spacial test of the heist. In order for it all to work, everything for the storage locker had to go in this trip. We’d then return and collect the last items to be stored in our partially renovated house. Each of these loads had to happen in single trips, there was not enough time for anything else, it had to fit. 

With a queen size mattress dissecting the van’s hold diagonally, my father and I wedged and crammed square boxes into triangular holes for half an hour. With a baby gate slipped in against the ceiling and a microwave balanced in the right rear corner we’d done it. Van packed. 

With an unhelpful sense of arrogance, a couple of fellas and a dachshund rolled away from the apartment and towards the storage locker. When we arrived, and I realised I’d left the padlock key in the car 15 minutes drive behind us, the whole scheme teetered on the edge of disaster for a moment. We didn’t have the time to go back for it, we had to go forward. This is how a heist works, when it gets tight, you just have to wriggle and move forward. 

We dumped the boxes, mattress, couch and baby gate on the loading dock. I left dad to ‘sort it out’ and drove back to the apartment, and the second load - due to be placed into our mildly renovated house. If I could get it loaded by myself and head back to the locker we wouldn’t loose too much time. Oh, and get the key, I had to get the padlock key. The only problem was the second load consisted of the dinning room table and chairs, a single seater couch chair and the fridge. 

Evie looked at me, I looked at her. ‘It’s a heist doggie, we can do it.’


The apartment was on the ground floor. Which meant it was only up 3 internal (carpeted) and 1 external steps. The fridge had two of those vastly unhelpful tiny barrel wheels built into the back corner. I applied a man to appliance bear hug and we grappled each other from kitchen to van bed in a few ungainly minutes. It worked, we were back on. I got the padlock key from the car, tossed in the other items and in a cloud of humility, laced with a lining of pride, drove back to the locker. 

Dad had sorted it out. Using 6 of the storage company’s specialist loading trolleys he’d moved the whole first load into the lift, up to the locker level, down the hall and had created a veritable 2021 Suez Canal of chaos in hallway B1. Our locker was B1L17, and if any of the good patrons who rented lockers B1L3 to B1L25 needed access that afternoon they were in trouble, the aisle was full. 

Dad looked at me, I looked at him. I saw doubt, I wonder what he saw? 

The real space Tetris game that had become our lives commenced again. I stood on a ladder and shoved precious items into precious small spaces, we schemed and packed, hoisted and scanned. The space slowly filled and if it wasn’t for the impending deadlines of returning the van, picking up the boy and getting a COVID test in time to cross the boarder into Queensland to reunite with my wife and daughter and not ruin Christmas, it would have been fun. 

The satisfaction when even the borrowed office chair fit into the last remaining space was significant. We had done it - trade could flow through the canal again.

We jumped back into the van, drove to the house, caught the builder leaving for the afternoon. Ran the fridge, table and chairs up into the future kitchen and got out of there. It was 4:30pm, the van was late and responded to the key in the ignition with an abrasive car alarm and a quiet engine. This was a low point for me. ​

I called the hire company, scanned their website chat, wrote a message to daycare and researched how to get a fast COVID test while on hold. 

I got through, the van was unlocked and we drove back to the apartment. Dad started to pack the car for our road trip and I dropped the van back before running to the house. We completed a speed Tetris of the car and drove to the real estate agent. I hoisted the keys on the counter and said ‘all good?’ ‘Sure, I’ll just find a form for you to sign’ the agent said while operating in some kind of slow motion. I scratched my name across the form while trying to stay cool, you’ve got to stay cool in a heist. 

We drove for daycare and snagged him a few minutes late. Dad drove to the airport while I filled in the forms to book and pay for three PCR tests. The car queue for the free tests at the airport was moving suspiciously quickly, they were ‘all full, no more tests today’. Getting a COVID test in Sydney in the week before Christmas was a very hard thing to do. 

We parked at the international terminal and walked to the queue, a long line of people static on the elevated walkway between the carpark and the terminal. We waited for an hour while Pan talked about not wanted to get a test and I thought about what we might do if this didn’t work out. The sun shot across the sky and sparked fire on the tall glass buildings of the city. There was salt and dirt on my skin and a light breeze moving past us. It was peaceful for a moment. 

Pan hated the test. I welcomed it. ‘You’ll have your result in 90 minutes.’ said the technician. Dad and I smiled as we walked back to the car. ‘Crazy day Dad.’ ‘Are we going to Brisbane now?’ asked Pan. ‘Yeah.’

We stopped in North Sydney for a burger. The road trip started at 8pm in the dark. Our negative results came back on the walk to the car. Taree was a gentle 3 hours drive away, it was the easiest part of the heist.  

At around 11pm Paterson sat awake as we charged up the highway to freedom and Christmas heist glory. ‘Dad, I said I wanted to fly with mum.’ 

I laughed in the dark. What an incredible day.