This post is sponsored by Nuffnang.

Travelling with a young family can be challenging at times and there has been more than one occasion that I have returned home from a holiday feeling completely exhausted. So with our youngest child only 6 months old, I was expecting a similar fate when we returned from our week end away to West Gippsland. I was however incredibly surprised to return home early Sunday evening having had a fabulous time away and actually feeling quite refreshed!

We left our home in the eastern suburbs early afternoon on Friday and made the short journey to Rawson which was to be our base for the week end. It was only a two hour drive from home and compared to our usual trek to Mildura, this passed very quickly. We didn’t even have one “are we there yet?”!

Rawson provided an excellent base for us to explore the West Gippsland area. It was only 45 minutes to the snow at Mt Baw Baw and only 15 minutes to the gorgeous Walhalla. We stayed at Rawson’s Village, a family operated holiday resort. It is in a beautiful location and having had an incredibly hectic week in the lead up to the visit, I felt myself relaxing with the tranquility of the surrounds and soaking up the slower pace.

Now that there are seven of us in the family, we spread ourselves comfortably over two separate rooms. We had the older boys in with dad (who watched the footy both Fri and Sat nights!!) and mum, baby and the younger two children with me (baby was asleep by 7pm and the rest of us by 8pm both nights!!!) It was a great set up for us, giving us plenty of space but still being able to share the experience together.

What also worked well for us was that the rooms had a fridge, kettle and toaster each. We took along our picnic set, some peanut butter, fresh fruit and cereal even though a full cooked breakfast was available. We had the cooked breakfast on the Sunday, which the kids just loved and they each ate an enormous plate of food. But on the Saturday when we needed to be out earlier, it was much easier to feed the kids a quick breakfast in the confines of the rooms, so we could get ready and make the most of our day at Mt Baw Baw.

Rawson Village is run by Trish and Kevin Reardon who have children themselves and are very understanding to the needs of families. It would be a fantastic place to stay for families travelling together, as the facilities, large rooms, large bistro, surrounding bushland and gardens are all very family friendly and built to cater for large groups. Tomorrow I will post photos from our day at Mt Baw Baw!

The family and I travelled as guests of Destination Gippsland.

Tags: holidays, travel