Sparrow Lorelei and Robin Artemis photo gallery

Phillip Island, 23-25 March, 2012

James finished work early on Friday afternoon and we headed straight out to Phillip Island, hoping to get across the city before peak hour. Didn't quite make it, so it was a 3 hour trip to get there, but we did arrive with enough light to get the tent up before dark despite it being very windy with intermittent rain. Then we followed Sparrow's lead. She was saying "We'll get the tent up and then we should have a cup of tea. Yes we should." I might have mentioned it first, but she took it and ran with it. So here we are in the camp kitchen sheltering from the elements, exploring and having a hot drink and snack before bed. They had a little shelf of books in there which the kids dived on, Robin found some soap to eat in a crevice behind the cupboards, and I was pleased to see that there were some bowls and spoons as I'd forgotten to pack any in the breakfast box.

The first night in the tent went OK. When setting it up we'd put the kids inside just before putting the fly on. But it turned out that two kids aren't enough to weight the tent down if the wind really decides to gust, and we hadn't got to the pegs yet. So the tent started to lift and move and then collapsed in on itself. Sparrow thought it was a great adventure - she likes all kinds of little houses to go in. But, that was Robin's first experience of a tent and he was NOT impressed. There was much "It tried to eat me!" wailing. So getting him to be comfortable sleeping in the tent was a little tricky as he was very miserable at having to stay in there. Then, continuing the theme of things not-quite-going-right, we had forgotten to pack any torches so James had used the car headlights to give us enough light to get the beds set up and the kids settled. And it was for just long enough that the car battery ran down too far to start again. So we left that problem for this morning. The kids and James and I have all survived our first night, cold but not wet, with lots of wind, and we're getting ready to go back to the camp kitchen for breakfast (and more books).

The caravan park I'd chosen is the one that's attached to A Maze 'N Things. So when we'd had breakfast and confirmed that the car wouldn't start this morning either, we walked around the front of the park to here. It's a fun place, with minigolf, a wooden maze and a big series of rooms of illusions and puzzles. And a chocolate shop, but that wasn't open first thing so we never ended up visiting it. We were slightly early for the maze to be open so we played in their playground for a little. We had to climb the fence to get to it, but I did eventually realise that it's not fenced off from the caravan park at all so we could just go back and forth from our tent quite easily, it was only about forty metres away.

When it opened we went inside. There were lots of fun things to play with. I'd stashed caramel rice crackers in my pocket for the inevitable moment when half-way through the one-way circuit the kids decided they really needed to eat. So we had those just inside the big maze after making it through the mirror maze and the seaside-themed illusion and puzzle hall. We didn't end up walking much of the maze. Sparrow took a couple of quick turns from the entry, found the exit and said "Here we are. Well done! Let's go to the cafe." and started marching straight out. James and I got the giggles because she was so serious and firm about it. We did convince her to try going through a bit more of it but she picked the turns that took us through the longest detour passages so we did a lot of walking without actually getting anywhere (it's the kind of maze where you have to try and reach the flags in the middle). When we got back near the start again we just quietly steered back to the exit. We were ready for lunch by then! The cafeteria had puzzles too, and a little play-kitchen filled with Duplo blocks, and the two kids were pretty happy with the setup. It was a nice morning.

James had another randomly optimistic go at seeing if the car would start, and a passerby said "Hill start". We were parked on a hill, so we tried that, and it worked just fine. Once the car was running we drove out to the Penguin Parade to buy tickets for that evening, picked up a geocache (in the "Not Roadkill" series), then drove back to the Koala Sanctuary which was just across the road from our caravan park. Robin fell asleep so James stayed with him in the car and Sparrow and I went in to see the koalas. This big stuffed fellow was a bit scary at first but I convinced Sparrow to give him a hug long enough to take a photo. Then we walked out on the boardwalks to see the koalas. Sparrow was getting a bit tired of walking, so when I knelt down to take a low-angle photo of her with the trees in the background she came back to me, lay down on the wood and put her head in my lap. Not quite the photo I was aiming for! We did see quite a few koalas though, the layout and interpretation was well designed to let people see the animals. They had little movable "fact" signs that they put on the railing in front of whichever tree each koala had chosen to sleep in that morning, which made it easy to work out where to look.

Then we went back to the tent and Sparrow had a nap there. James waited with Robin and watched the football while I went and found another geocache just down the road (a beautiful walk on a sunny day), then had a nap too. I sat with Robin in the car until he woke up, then he and I played on the ground outside and had our afternoon tea while we waited for Sparrow to wake too.

We drove up to Cowes to find a supermarket to buy torches - and there were three of them. Three supermarkets, that is. I wasn't expecting that many, but I guess it's big enough. We played at a waterside playground til 5 pm, then went hunting for a place to eat dinner amongst Cowes' restaurants. There was a nice Indian / pizza place and that worked out nicely. James and I had a lovely vegetable korma and a tropical chicken pizza, Sparrow and Robin ate heaps of garlic bread and saffron/cardamom rice. Then we went up to the Penguin Parade to watch the penguins for the evening.

I have no photos of this as cameras were banned, but it really was amazing. The wait until they came in was tricky but manageable - I was able to distract the kids in the main building for some time with the help of the theatre, the souvenir shop and the nestboxes-with-viewholes they have there that you can look into and see penguins waiting for each other. Meanwhile, James went down and secured us a place to sit on the big benches and waited there for us. When it was close to dark the kids and I went down and found him and snuggled up under blankets to watch and wait. The kids were better at that than I expected. The walk back to the centre after the penguin arrival was quite good - we'd waited long enough that the penguins were making their way along the side of the walkway so we could stand and watch them run past in groups, calling to each other. So amazing to see such tiny creatures travelling such distance. The kids loved it and were totally fascinated, it was very well worth doing.

Sparrow says this photo is "Sparrow and Robin. Robin is riding a koala and Sparrow is riding a bicycle". It's pack up time the next morning - James is keeping the kids busy in the playground while I get as much of the interior of the tent packed up and put in the car as I can. The kids came back to help with the important job of flattening the air mattresses, then played on the ground nearby while we got the tent down and away. And then, off again. We stopped at the Chocolate Factory that's just after the entry to the island. They have a tour and a museum you can go through which looked like it would be a lot of fun, but it was a bit expensive for four people when two of the four weren't likely to really get much out of it. So we had hot chocolate and chocolate cake at the cafe instead, then drove on.

Caldermeade Dairy Farm. We'd seen it on the way down and planned to stop on the way back if we could. It was a nice distance to make a lunch stop so that worked out nicely. They have a big good playground and a nursery of baby animals that you can go in and pat. Sparrow did like both of those but got distracted by the dandelions. James showed her how to blow one and she spent simply ages running back and forth to pick more dandelions to blow. Funny to watch, because her method of finding dandelions wasn't to look around the big paddock and see where they were then run to them, it was to run back to the spot she'd last been in and then look near there for more. James said with that kind of thinking she'd probably be quite a natural computer programmer. Blowing the dandelions was a bit tricky because she hasn't yet got the pursed-lips thing. Instead she tucks her top lip under and tries to blow, which means all the air goes sideways. Eventually she worked out that waving the dandelions hard in the air would have almost as much effect, and that was good too. After enough dandelions we went and saw the animals, then had lunch at the dairy (with fresh-milk milkshakes that were so rich they were hard to finish). And then drove the next hour-and-a-bit home, with the kids sleeping away.