Mum, Dad, two kids, two horses, a dog and the 3600km trip to Melbourne

Taking the family away for the school holidays can be stressful enough, but imagine travelling 3600km with two horses in your caravan.

That’s what the Hewitt-Toms family have just done, in an epic road trip to Melbourne from their far north Queensland home.

But having horses in your caravan is not as squishy, and smelly, as it sounds.

The family from Kuranda, near Cairns – parents Chris and Terry and kids Olivia Hewitt-Toms, 12, and her sister Jamie, 15 – rode in their truck, which tows the ‘‘gooseneck’’, the slang term for an eight-tonne motor home with built-in horse stalls.

At night, the horses stayed in yards or stables at showgrounds and pony clubs. The family slept in bunks in the well-partitioned ‘‘human’’ end of the caravan, which has a fridge, stove and shower.

The girls are among 400 children from across the country, aged 6 to 18, competing this week in the Australian Interschool Equestrian Championships at Werribee Park National Equestrian Centre.

Chris Hewitt admits it’s "crazy" to drive so far with two hefty animals (and chihuahua, Charlie).

But when both daughters qualified to represent Queensland, ‘‘I just couldn’t say no’’.

On Wednesday, Olivia competed in showjumping, while Jamie came 13th in the show horse section on Tuesday.

Jamie jokes that show horse is ‘‘like, riding around, looking pretty’’ but she had to execute a sequence of trots and canters, riding and leading her immaculately groomed horse Rathowen Blitz around a ring.

Chris Hewitt estimates the trip is costing about $10,000.

But it's been a family adventure, riding the horses along Cabarita Beach in northern NSW, visiting friends in Canberra, seeing wild rabbits at Mossvale in the NSW southern highlands, and admiring the bright yellow canola fields in northern Victoria.

It’s their first trip to Melbourne, and while they haven’t yet seen the CBD, the girls enjoyed viewing giraffes and hippos at nearby Werribee Open Range Zoo on Sunday.

Ms Hewitt said she and Terry have driven the girls and horses as far as Brisbane and Toowoomba to compete, both about 1700km away. They often drive six hours to Townsville.

But the Melbourne trip was daunting. ‘‘There were moments when I was like, ‘it’s way too hard'," she said.

An event organiser Suzie Batten, whose 17-year-old daughter Georgie is Victorian team captain, said for parents the logistics are enormous.

‘‘I wish mine had done ping pong,'' Ms Batten joked.

"It would be so much easier, but we do it because we love the sport, we love the animals and we love our kids.’’

Article courtesy of Fairfax Digital and The Age