There is nothing like constant rejection to make your mind snap. Last week my husband and I and our 2-year-old daughter hit the Pacific Highway to return home after our Blue Mountains Christmas. (This was our Exmas – the other four were distributed to appropriate ex-partners and family members.) After luxuriating in the surrounds of Mosman lunching with an old girlfriend, marvelling at her view of Balmoral and how she managed to get 12 sofas into a sunroom, we strapped into the Commodore and bade our farewell.

After a very cruisey two-day journey to the mountains we were confident that Ivy, our littlest traveller, was quite capable of managing a five-to-six-hour stint. We’d taken the New England Highway on the way down, overnighted at Tamworth at a glorious resort that had once been a power station. There was no traffic, we had a two-bedroom apartment with kingsize bed and jacuzzi for just $165.

We stopped off at vineyards in the Hunter Valley, marvelled at the exclusive horses of Scone, took a dirt road, and drove through hundreds of miles of wildflowers. We reached a roundabout, the wheel of our misfortune. John asked the important question, should we go to Tamworth again? I said, No! Let’s go the Coast Road and try something new.

John and I chatted about our various hotel options. After a week of dossing down with family on a series of bad mattresses, I was up for five-star. King-size bed, jacuzzi, plasma. Every cell in my body rejoiced for the sheer thrill of it. Ivy watched a movie, fell asleep, and as we approached Taree we realised that we’d make Port Macquarie without too much fuss.

‘Let’s stay at Rydges,’ I gushed. ‘Port Macquarie just fills up with all these inbred Wauchope regional types – they’ll all be in the two-star hotels and caravan parks. We’re sure to get a room somewhere really nice.’

My arrogance was rewarded with grief. There was nothing. It was 7pm, Ivy had just woken up and started to make sounds about being removed from the car. Even the shit hotels that we scoffed at bore ‘No Vacancy’ signs. We patrolled the beachfront accommodation. Full Occupancy. We drove around the city. Full Occupancy. We drove around the caravan parks. Full Occupancy. After an hour of flashing neon rejections, we drove out of Port Macquarie. I, as usual, was completely philosophical. ‘It’s a shit hole anyway, full of old people and yobbos.’ I was starting to feel resentment prickling my skin. I felt that childish sensation welling in my throat, the burning lump of disappointment. I wanted to cry.

We had to go to Kempsey. There is no five-star in Kempsey. We were 30 kays outside of a two-star town. John pointed out a remote roadside hotel attached to a pub on the way into town. He joked that he thought it was just like the Bates motel. He’d once stopped in for a beer, but left after one sip for fear of being raped and murdered. I noticed that there was a vacancy there. John refused to stop.

We hit Kempsey. ‘Go to the other side of town,’ I declared as we drove past numerous decrepit roadside hotel motels. I hate hotel motels. They’re like stinky jail cells with chenille bedspreads and tiny soaps. But I had a plan. Some time ago I had stayed on the river in Kempsey at the Country Comfort, a passably modest but clean and well-located stopover for salesman and weary travellers. We ignored the vacancies at the other providers and went for the Comfort. I couldn’t believe it. ‘No Vacancy’. Shit. We tried the hotel next door. Just as we pulled into reception the woman who looked like she was made from the same laminex as the check-in desk scrawled a definite NO on A4 and stuck it to her glass door.

We tried the NRMA offering next to McDonald’s. One room only. And it was smoking. I considered buying Ivy a pack. I wanted to cry. We sat in McDonald’s charging our phones and our DVD. I rang ahead to Macksville. Everything was booked out. I rang every hotel in South West Rocks. Nothing. I tried Coffs Harbour. Every resort or hotel was fully booked. Except for one four-bedroom Villa for $600. I looked at John; he was pragmatic. ‘We’ll just drive home.’ I wanted to throw a tantrum. My five-star dream had turned into desperate bedlessness in Kempsey McDonald’s. I ate a Mighty Angus. I cried into my McFlurry.

I didn’t want to keep driving. It was now 10pm. We had been looking for accommodation for three hours. We didn’t have enough charge in the DVD for more than a half hour and Ivy was wired – there’d be no sleeping babies for some time yet. Great, fatigue, frustration and a screaming child. John drove out of Kempsey, we drove through Macksville hoping, but nothing. Valla Beach, nothing, so John pushed homewards. Then I snapped. ‘I can’t do it. We have to stop. I’d rather sleep in the car.’ John relented and we broke into a caravan park with ‘NO CABINS NO SITES’ scrawled in chalk on the entrance board. We pulled up by the river, and John unpacked our bags into the front seat while I squatted on the grass for a piss. It was 11pm.

Then I saw her moving across the lawn. Like an old croc, Salty’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Obese with skin like the heel of an unshoed foot, Salty stared accusingly at me while I begged. ‘Please, I know you have nothing available, we need to sleep in the car… please… we’ve been everywhere… I can’t go on.’ She moved off with a ‘pay me in the morning’.

So we slept on towels in the back of the station wagon. Ivy was delighted. ‘This is ’citing!’ We lay in the car, on makeshift pillows, with fleshy thighs bearing down into the cold hardness of the boot. All night I was awakened by the dull ache of discomfort. By morning, caravan park dwellers and fishermen eyed us suspiciously: who were these strange tentless folk who emerged from the wagon of their car fully clothed?

Fortunately one group took pity on us; it turned out they were Salvation Army Officers, and made us coffee. When I told them our sad story, they laughed in commiseration, with one of the chaps reaching out and rubbing my belly, ‘Just like in the Christmas Story, love, no room at the inn’. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t pregnant. I just jumped on my fat ass and rode away.