Dad called it the Psycho Motel, but those summer holidays were pure magic

I didn't know who Norman Bates was when I was nine but my memories of the family-sized rooms and basic pool at the cheap and cheerful Port Macquarie hotel my family stayed at are anything but scary.

Before then, we had always holidayed on the NSW South Coast, chugging around in a dinghy with an outboard and flopping into the lake. But this was a new era for my family - the North Coast holiday era.

It would begin when we piled into Dad's station wagon, four kids shoulder to shoulder across the back. Two of us, the youngest, were in the middle, seatbelt stretched across our laps, feet resting on the hump in the floor. Our mission was to "make friends" with the older sibling seated next to us so we could rest our head on their shoulder when we felt sleepy.

The trip took six hours from our western Sydney home. Mum would pass a deep Tupperware tub of lollies back to us - a collection of Clinkers, Fruit Rings, and Strawberries and Cream - filling the boredom and our carsick tummies.

Once there, we would run straight to the hotel pool where we would spend 90 per cent of our time. The no-frills, saltwater rectangle became our kingdom. I don't remember any other hotel guests ever joining us in it - they probably didn't get a look in.

My older sister and I would play "Froggies' Picnic". We would start at opposite ends of the pool and swim along the bottom towards each other, enacting an underwater picnic when we met in the middle.

One year, our neighbours came away with us, our ramshackle kids' group growing in number and age. The older members would walk around the perimeter of the water, creating a whirlpool, and the youngest kids, like me, would be carried around in the slipstream.

I remember playing Marco Polo, the joyous screams. "Fish out of water?" "Sare!" Always Sare (me).

I remember the sunburn. I still put sunscreen on the spot where my arms meet my torso because of the burn I got that summer.

There was a Video Ezy up the road. Dad would bring our VHS player from home. We would walk up and hire five weeklies for $5. Watching Teen Witch and The Labyrinth, curtains drawn against the afternoon heat, a fan whirring lazily as we misted ourselves with water.

We would head out most days, to Fantasy Glades and Timbertown and to the wave beaches, white sand squeaking under our feet as we found the perfect spot to pitch the "babana" (my younger sister's toddler-speak version of "cabana"). We found a lagoon, warmed by the sun - I swear it was the first time I ever saw Mum swim.

I remember the fecund bush along the boardwalk, the rainforesty wetness, and the heat piling up as the day wore on, sand scratching between our toes where our thongs rubbed.

And the air-conditioning in the car, coming back from the beach where I learnt to bodyboard one afternoon, just me and Dad, for what felt like hours, Dad standing on the shore while I surfed back in again and again, salty blonde hair sticking in my eyes and mouth.

My partner and I drove up that way recently, not quite as far as Port Macquarie. The heat smelt the same. And there were memories of us, history tethering us there: our little family unit, made larger by our neighbours' family unit.

But now, a member of our kids' group, gone too young. And dementia has drawn a veil over Mum. Yet the cicadas are still calling, asking me to return. And next time, I will.