Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Camping at Whroo (the Eftel Christmas Party), 3-4 July, 2010

After not being able to get everyone together for the company Christmas party last Christmas because of too many other parties, the Melbourne office of Eftel decided to have their Christmas party as a joint family campout in July. Location: Whroo, a former gold rush town and now little more than a cemetery, spring and the odd ruin or two in Victoria's beautiful box-ironbark state forest.

A quick stop at Rushworth, the closest extant town, on the way in. I quite like Rushworth. Sparrow is exploring the former railway line at a tiny little sectioned-shed that is now called not-too-euphemistically "The Comfort Station".

We were last to arrive, and when we got there the others were ready to head out for a walk. So we went off to look for the Whroo cemetery. Dads carrying babes in this shot - James and Sparrow, with Luke and Eve. And Greg, studying the map. The rest of the kids and people are off through the forest somewhere, following the signs.

The three of us at the Whroo cemetery. There's a geocache nearby, called "Whroo goes there?", and the clues to find it are all on the gravestones. This was our first chance to try and find a geocache officially now that we're signed up for it. So with lots of help from kids and mums and dads to find the clues, and a little mental math, we got the coordinates sorted out and James wandered off into the bush til he found it. The kids were quite delighted to see the assortment of odd things in it. Unfortunately the container had been broken and filled up with rain, so we left it to dry out and recover overnight.

The Aboriginal spring and waterhole that gave Whroo its name, from the word "wahroo" meaning mouth. It's a mouth in the rock. It doesn't look like much, but it's a reminder just how precious any reliable source of water is.

On the walk back I found this. Mistletoe, broken off the branch under its own weight and fallen to the ground. What's particularly special about this is that what the mistletoe is growing on is more mistletoe, of a different species. The initial one is the one that's common on ironbarks, and the one that's parasitising it I don't know yet but suspect I will find normally grows on wattles. Or box trees. Unless mistletoe does something weird with its leaves depending on what its host plant is. Sparrow liked the branch of stuff, anyway.

Back at camp, Sparrow is making friends around the campfire. The fencing is Luke and his wife's idea, after the last time they took their daughter Eve camping. She would have only been a little older then than Sparrow is now, and they just couldn't keep her from trying to walk into the fire. So they brought a fence that would keep the small inquisitive and invincible people from getting that little bit too close. James and I both appreciated this - while we always know where she is and watch her, in the dark she can get too close too quickly quite easily. This way she patted the hot wire and posts a few times, enough to think to herself "That's hot and I won't touch it again" for at least thirty seconds, but never actually burnt herself on anything.

Dawn the next morning. We'd all been up for a little while (midwinter sunrise is lovely and late!) and were happily enjoying breakfast. The only problem with the fence around the fire is that it did make it tricky to cook on, so I used the fallback of hot-water cooking from the thermos we'd brought. I tried toasting bread on a stick but it was hard to get my arm with the toast over the fence and at the right angle. AJ had a nice wire-thingy that held bread much better and could be attached to any length stick, and I might look into that more carefully and add one to our camping box. James and I spent a lot of time looking at the gear the other families had and thinking "Hmm, can see how that would be useful". Lots of little things that become worth the effort when there's two adults plus three kids under ten, instead of just minimalist-me. The shelter-and-tent behind us folds out from a trailer, and I do like the idea of having a sheltered space to do cooking and cleaning etc in. Not that we have anywhere we can put a trailer.

Mum and daughter in the dawnlight.

Choughs! James said to me "What would a big black bird with white wings be?" and I said "A white-winged chough". And there was a group of them, walking along the ground nearby, looking for stuff in the leaf litter. Sparrow decided she should follow them. You can just see one of them further back in the middle.

Wait, this is where it was, where'd it go? Foraging birds still manage to move so much faster than she can, especially with all the layers we had her wrapped up in.

OK, I'll give up on looking for whatever it was I was looking for and look around to see what else there is. Hey, there's Daddy. I'll go that way.

Sparrow having fun with some of the other kids. They liked "the baby". She never minds the attention. The game they are playing here is "Who will you choose?" and then she gets to poke one of them in the face and they all laugh. How is that not a fun game?

We took the older kids off with us to reinstate yesterday's geocache with a spare container I had. The walk exhausted Sparrow and she fell fast asleep. It tired James out a bit too - she really is getting heavy and should be on his back, but we didn't think to move her around. You can see here on her face if you look (and in the last couple of photos too) there's a great bruise on her forehead above her right eye. She stumbled, and faceplanted onto the hinge of a camping chair. Poor muffet. She seems to always have some kind of awful looking bruise on her forehead. And they're almost always caused by her tripping on the stuff she's had put on her feet to keep them from freezing off. Midwinter is a terrible time to be getting good at walking.

Taking the tents down. Ours really did look small next to the other three condominiums. I guess it is a bit small, too - once you had the air mattress inside there wasn't really any room to put stuff, only us. Time to look at a new tent big enough for at least three people. Sparrow is somewhere in that group of kids and people behind the tree by the campfire.

Dad and daughter playing with glee.

Several of the other kids had brought bikes, and it was a good place for ripping around the main campsite track. Sparrow thought the bikes were fascinating and spent a lot of time studying the wheels.

She also really liked the football one boy was playing with, and held onto it for quite a while... until she saw a tree, and then suddenly the ball was forgotten. Ironbarks do have wonderfully interesting bark to explore.

James, Sparrow and I went for a short walk around the campsite while some of the others were still packing up. There were two dams nearby and I thought this earth wall might mark one of them but it didn't. It was just a big pile of earth in huge lumps and bumps, possibly left over from gold diggings, and obviously well used by bikes. I took a couple of nice photos of James and Sparrow with these trees and the lovely forest feeling. But instead of putting up one of those I'm putting up the one where Sparrow decided she'd had enough of sitting here with Daddy and was going to walk down this slope. No concept of steepness or falling, just stick the foot out and head forward, I'm gunna go THIS way. The first aid books call this age "inquisitive and invincible". I love the expression on James' face.

Playing ball. Most of us joined in to one degree or another, and there were at least three balls being tossed around. Greg on the right has just tried to kick two at once - the yellow ball just above him, and the blue one higher up. Sparrow loved the balls and thought this was all pretty cool. I was glad she was seeing people play with the balls as a game.

More balls. It was getting to lunchtime though, and James and I needed to start home knowing that Sparrow would make the trip take a lot longer than it seemed on paper.

A short stop back in Rushworth to grab lunch in their bakery, and then we were on the road again home. Sparrow didn't sleep for any of the drive home - too wet, gassy, thirsty, hungry, tired, bored, you name it. So it was definitely a long trip -sigh-. But we made it. And I learnt that a muesli bar carefully parcelled out into tiny bites and offered at arms reach on request can keep Sparrow distracted and peaceful for close to thirty minutes.