As one drives around Australia, you periodically see signs indicating the current bushfire risk in the area that you’re in – the so called Fire Danger Rating Scale. This ranges from Low/Moderate through to Catastrophic or Code Red. However, as we’ve driven around Australia, we’ve devised our own complimentary scale using the same rating levels.

The William Danger Rating Scale (or Will-o-meter) indicates the success of a car journey or meal out and uses a complex formula including, but not limited to, number of toys thrown, decibels of shouting from the back seat, time spent sleeping, amount of dinner eaten and general grumpiness.

We had a short three hour drive to the Blue Mountains today but, despite this, the first hour or so of our journey was rated Very High/Severe with much shouting and throwing of toys.

After feeding the goats and alpacas (again), we left the farm and set off driving up the wiggly road out of the Kangaroo Valley. We stopped after the first hour at a historic pretty village called Berrima – parts of which could be lifted straight out of the Cotswolds. It’s one of the earliest settlements in NSW and was apparently once a much more important town – this can be seen with the large courthouse and old gaol that until recently was still a prison. The town also has a very good children’s playground and Wills had great fun on the swings, slide and his first go on a zip wire – this, combined with a cake with a smiley face on improved his mood immensely!

The next two hours in the car therefore went fairly smoothly with Wills fast asleep for most of the journey around Sydney and up into the Blue Mountains. Danger rating scale Low/Moderate!