05/09/2026
Dads don't ask for much.
Give a dad a camp chair, a cup of tea or maybe something abit stronger and a view he picked himself and he's sorted for the whole weekend.
Because dads don't really want the van. They want the excuse.
The excuse to leave at 4am with the kids asleep in their pyjamas. To take the long way home because there's a lookout marked on the map. To sit and watch his kids do absolutely nothing for an entire afternoon, and quietly decide that was the best day of the year.
And the excuse to tell the same jokes. Every trip. On repeat.
"We're not lost. We're exploring."
"It's not a race." (To every car that overtakes. For twenty years.)
He knows he's told it before. He's telling it again anyway.
Everyone reckons a dad's job is providing. It isn't. It's sitting in the passenger seat while someone learns to reverse a trailer, and not yelling. It's checking the tyre pressures at the servo when nobody asked him to. It's a thousand small unremarkable hours his kids will carry for the rest of their lives, while he lies awake convinced he isn't doing enough.
He is. Turning up is most of it.
And here's the thing about a joke you've heard a hundred times. One day you'd give anything to hear it a hundred and one.
So today, to all of them. The dads who drove through the night so everyone else could sleep. The stepdads who never made it feel like a favour. The pop who's really the dad. The mums doing both jobs. And anyone getting through today without their old man for the first time.
If he's still telling the same one, let him. Laugh like it's new. Then get him in the photo. Someone's going to want that photo one day.
Happy Father's Day from all of us at Sunrise Caravans.
What's your dad's joke? The one he's told a hundred times and still cracks himself up at 👇
📸 Photo supplied by Life with the Drews, Sunrise Family Adventure 21'6
