Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Water, water, everywhere - La Nina summer in the twenty-first month, 9 Jan - 9 Feb, 2011

It's a La Nina summer, after several years of hot and dry and drought. Victoria wasn't nearly as heavily affected as Queensland, but we still had a LOT of unseasonal rain. Normal rainfall average for January is around 70mm. In 2009, a peak El Nino summer, we had 0.9mm. This year we had over 200mm in the first two weeks, I'm not sure what the final total was. There was a lot of flooding, road closures, five thousand dollars damage done to the supermarket downstairs because their gutters weren't big enough to handle it. It was also unusually humid - Melbourne's normally pretty dry. I didn't mind the cooler summer, I did find being pregnant in 2009's summer a little hard to cope with and this was much much easier on me. Sparrow loved it. It was warm enough for her to not wear much, and the whole world kept getting turned into puddles as if it was just for her. So here's a few adventures we had in which water was a theme.

One morning at Werribee Zoo. That doesn't sound like water, I know, but just wait. We were there partly because it had been raining, was scheduled for more intermittent showers, and was quite humid, so I knew there wouldn't be too many other people out first thing in the morning. We had a wonderfully peaceful walk and saw lots of animals (some of whom also saw us).

While Werribee Zoo is mainly focused around the bus safari tour, they have a fairly good walking trail with strong themes and plenty of adventure feel to it. Sparrow very much enjoyed climbing up and over this mock-anthill all by herself. I had her in the pants that Joanna gave us as they were nice and light in the humidity.

The pants haven't lasted very long though. This is a mockup of an African village, used for holding ed programs and displays in. Just to the left you'll see what is meant to be a "fire pit", however it's full of water. Sparrow went straight to it and sat down in it saying "Puck!" (puddle), before I could even realise it was there, and that was the last of the pants. She's now chasing chickens. I spent a bit of time this zoo trip trying to work out if her nappy was wet on the inside as well as on the outside.

We've moved on around the trail to the hippo area. When we got there a hippo emerged from the water, lumbered out of the lake and wandered off to the back paddock (you can see it through the railings).

In that same area they have this hippo playground. I'm not sure about the wisdom of teaching kids that it's fun to play with hippopotami, but it does allow some sense of scale and what the animal is really like given that you often don't see much more than the top of their head or a distant butt.

Apparently, this playground is a water playground. With automatic sensors so that the fountains start when kids are exploring. Both Sparrow and I were caught a little off guard. But it was brilliant fun. I took her nappy off immediately so that it had a chance of staying dry, and let her go for it.

Little hoses, big hoses, big sprays from high and low. It was marvellous. The rubber flooring is permeable so the water just goes straight back in and is recirculated. Sparrow burnt off a lot of energy today.

On the way home from daycare one day after we'd had some pretty heavy rains Sparrow was requesting "bitch" (beach). I looked at how the whole world had become puddles and thought that this wasn't something we should miss out on. So here Sparrow is, walking up the road through what's normally car parking spaces, with water almost up to her knees. The little roadway that the council, ambos and lifesavers use to access the beach is also underwater, as is much of the footpath along beside. It's worth noting that maps of projected sea level rise by 2100 show this as being about where the ocean would come to with (I think it was) an 80cm rise. Those beachfront houses would still be above the waterline, but they'd have the beach in their front yards!

The beach itself was also flooded. The council had been laying down new sand ("renourishing the beach") so had raised the main sand areas much higher than the usual water line. But there was so much rain it just wasn't able to get into the sand, so there were these giant puddles all over the beach as well. Great for supervising toddler water play.

The beach at Altona is very flat, goes out a long way without much decline, and that's nice when we're chasing a very excited little girl around by the water. Sparrow is slowly making her way to the "real" ocean, across the tidal-marked sand.

Just splashing and wading.

This is another spontaneous beach trip, a late afternoon when James was able to be with us. Sparrow had got a bit leery of waves, so she'd run out into them and then run back when it got a bit too much. Not that these were really any kind of size of waves, but relative to her they were obviously big enough.

It was much sunnier and nicer weather this trip, and I had fun trying to catch the patterns of the sunlight through the water and over the heavily rippled sand. Sparrow had a great time roaming around because there's so much of the beach where the water is only this deep, she can run for simply ages. James and I took advantage of this to let her burn off as much energy as she possibly could - one of our constant primary objectives.

Two seconds before I pressed the button for this photo, Sparrow was standing with James being very cute. It doesn't take long for her to find mischief though. Daddy was looking at Mummy instead of her, and she's instantly found one of these little dips in the sand to play with. Most of the sand we're standing on is quite hard, but there are these holes of soft stuff all over the place. James thinks a creature makes them. I suspect they're dig spots made by the people we often see roaming the low water areas with metal detectors. Neither of us really know. But Sparrow knows it's soft sand that's easy to pick up and eat. It's the only problem with beach trips - she just cannot be convinced to not eat the sand.

This kind of has a little mermaid effect. I'd be tempted to photoshop a tail on, if I had that kind of time.

Chasing seagulls, and watching them run and rise in an arc around her and James.

Here we are at the Royal Botanic Gardens. It was more by accident than anything. My friend Kaths had a little boy, we went to see her at the hospital (both for friendliness and because I wasn't going to miss a chance to let Sparrow see a "new baby brother"). But the trip went wrong in almost every way possible and we didn't get in to see her. So even though it was now pushing both our lunchtimes and I knew I'd regret it, we stopped at the RBG on the way home. They have this fantastic Childrens Garden that I hadn't been into since before Sparrow was born. And Sparrow really needed a chance to play rather than being in the car or rushing around pointlessly with me -smile-. It was a warm and humid day again, and Sparrow managed to find her way straight to this little stream.

I spent the first ten minutes or so first trying to stop her sitting in it (though I gave up on that almost immediately) and then just trying to stop her from drinking it. It was fairly heavily chlorinated, so not really nice to drink. This is the "I'm going to take another drink from the stream as soon as you glance away, can you outstare me?" face she's making.

I tried distracting her from drinking the water by encouraging her to explore nearby plants (designed for kids to adventure through), and when that failed managed to get her to walk up the stream to see what was around the corner. This may have been a mistake. Here's the source of the stream: this little rockpile fountain.

There was another boy already playing there, and "my little boy" (as she was immediately identified) joined in with great gusto and glee. Sparrow loved that the older boy could make the fountains squirt different directions by putting his hand on them, and had a fair go at trying to do this herself. There was much soaking involved. I would have removed the nappy long before now if it wasn't a public water play space with a vested interest in keeping the water cleaned.

I am the Witchdoctor... actually, it's really a "Please help me off this, I got up and don't know how to get down" gesture. Eventually I got her away from the fountain long enough to look around at a few other bits, like these rock formations, the sand and grit that's around, that big black tree in the background that was lifted out of a riverbed after lying there a few thousand years. She ended up back at the fountain for a bit though.

And we've finally made it away from the stream and fountain. I'd have stayed longer except that there's only so long she and I can go without lunch so going home was getting essential. Sparrow is standing with the figures from Norman Lindsay's "Magic Pudding", which I will have to read to her when she gets a little older. I'm about to remove this very wet nappy and try and get her in a dry one for the car ride home. The other family we'd seen at the fountain had also finally made it this far and was doing the same thing I was - attempting to dry kids off and change wet clothes for dry. The mum said each time they came they learnt something new they needed to bring, til now it had always been at least two sets of clean clothes but now she was going to make sure she packed bathers as well.