Childcare is like a game of Tetris for Prue Barlow. Two days a week she drives her four-year-old son, Max, and two-year-old daughter, Audrey, from the family’s farm in northern Victoria to the nearby town of Rushworth, where Audrey is dropped off at the local daycare centre. There the family meets another local mother, who drives Max and her own child to kindergarten in the town of Colbinabbin, 20km in the opposite direction.
After school there’s a similar reciprocal scheme: Barlow’s friend takes Max after kinder for an hour and a half until the work day ends, while Barlow ferries her friend’s younger child home from daycare.
