Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Camping at Ocean Grove, 26-27 February, 2011

We wanted to go camping one more time before the Newbie arrives, and before we get an extra level of difficulty added. Sparrow had helped her Daddy find a new tent and we wanted to have a go at putting it up while there was only one toddler to keep an eye on. So we finally managed to get a weekend where there wasn't anything else on that we couldn't miss, and drove down to Ocean Grove, a town at the heads of the Barwon River just past Geelong, about an hour's drive away from our place.

First stop: lunch at a bakery. We found an outlet for Ramsay's Bakery (which has several shops around the Geelong area apparently) and they did some really amazing pies. Mine was wild rabbit with carrot, which is what's on the table. Sparrow flat out rejected anything orange as being a "real" pie. She's eating a bite of James' crocodile-in-white-sauce pie instead, but even that is having trouble meeting her standards. James and I thought the food was great though. Afterwards Sparrow walked out of the bakery and straight into the second hand bookshop next door and selected herself some books. We felt we could accommodate this desire.

The tent set up. The fly's not on yet, it was a warm day and rain was still several hours off. James is quite pleased that he can stand up in this one. I'm pleased that there's a space we can play with Sparrow in out of the rain and away from mosquitoes that is not the spot where one of us could be sleeping. It does break my rule for tents of not having a tent I can't put up by myself in the dark and rain when I've forgotten to eat dinner. You definitely need two people for this one, and two people who are able to communicate. But it's relatively simple to put up, almost identical to my old one in structure but just a lot bigger in all directions. And we will be able to fit all four of us in it for the lifespan of the tent, even if the Newbie turns out to be 6'2" (though I'm betting on 5'11").

Sparrow is helping pump up the air mattress. She finds the whole process pretty good.

She and I are testing the air mattress to see if it's blown up enough. And it is. We did decide that we'll need to rethink the mattress problem for the next time we go camping though. It's just barely big enough for us and her, but only just and not comfortably so, especially when I'm this big. So by the next time she'll need a mattress of her own. And we might get one a little less thick and bouncy that I'm more able to move around on :-) Not that I expect to be pregnant again on an air mattress, but when you have to keep getting up in the night to deal with an infant or small child you want a mattress you can get on and off without the assistance of a crane. Maybe that's just me.

The whole point of picking Ocean Grove as our camping spot, and the main reason people go there, is that they have beaches with real ocean. Some of the closest to Melbourne, and it's a nice family-friendly surf beach too. Plenty of people the afternoon we were there, but not crowded in any way. You can't see the surf lifesaving flags in this photo, but there is a patrolled section of the beach that was probably about 50 metres wide. Most people weren't bothering to swim between the flags. Sparrow had been asking for "beach" almost constantly for a couple of days, or was that a couple of weeks? so it was nice to be able to indulge her on such a lovely warm afternoon.

Nice long flat entry to the beach, long stretch of shallow water. So there was plenty of room for us to wander in a little, wander back, let her go closer to the waves and retreat as she felt comfortable. I ended up taking her in to where the waves were breaking (which was about her chest height) and helping her "jump" waves as they came by, which generated squeals of utter delight. You may notice she's not in either bathers or a hat. Her bathers have been right next to the change bag for several days ready for a chance to take her swimming. But when we packed the bag this morning they were no longer there. We turned the house upside down looking for them but to no avail. She often hides one crucial thing I need just before we go out, doesn't seem to have yet realised that this limits how much she gets to go out. So she's little nuddy-bottom for this swimming trip. The hat James and I would swear she wore all the way to the beach but then mysteriously vanished. We think she managed to ditch it just before the stairway down the dunes, it did turn up on the walk back.

Back at the tent, one little girl has been washed and dried and changed into warmer clothes as the day was cooling off and the rain was getting closer (nothing like being able to check the weather radar on your iPad). She's happily reading her new books. The little one on the tent floor in front of her is emphatically HER book. She picked it out, she held it all the way out of the bookshop, and we weren't even allowed to hold it long enough to read it to her for the first day or two.

Exploring the main street while waiting for our restaurant-of-choice to open for the dinner serving. We could have cooked camp food, but figured if we were only gone one night and were staying in such civilised surrounds that we'd have plenty of places to choose from to eat out.

Balzano was the place we'd picked - an upper-floor Italian restaurant. Sparrow loved the steps up to it. She was being very difficult about walking around, both along the street and up to the restaurant. I think she was a bit tired, she'd slept on the drive down which was both early and short for her. Then she'd not eaten enough for lunch and been too busy to tell me she was hungry, so afternoon tea was a bit late for her too.

Luckily the food was highly suitable for all of us. I had a fish-and-spaghetti dish that Sparrow loved the fish from, ate heaps, she refused both of our pasta (unusual!) but was quite willing to accept chips. So James and I had a very elegant and delicious Italian meal, one of the best we've had in Melbourne, and Sparrow basically had fish and chips. But it worked out fine, she ate heaps, and entertained herself happily with another of her new books.

The caravan park had a couple of playgrounds, and James dropped us at one on the way back to the tent after dinner. It was a chance to burn off just a little more energy before the rain came. Sparrow was a little muted, but enthusiastic. Especially when she saw the "horse", which for once is vaguely horse-shaped. She loves these bouncy things, calls them all horse.

I thought this was the best bit. Sparrow could go up these stairs and down the slide on her own while I sat on this handy bench watching. I had to talk her into it the first time, but once she'd got the idea all I had to do was clap every time she came down the slide and she'd run back to do it again. So she went up and down this at least a dozen times while I got to sit still. Some more kids came along while we were here, and another mum coaxed her up to the big slide on the far side of this bit of equipment and took her down on her lap, which was very nice of her. I don't really have enough lap to do that at this point! I did give it a go later, but it turns out I also have a bit too much bottom so it was very hard to slide. I had to walk myself down by pulling with my feet. Sparrow found this a little funny.

We left the playground just before it started to rain (I'd been carefully watching across the river for signs of imminent arrival). And then it drizzled a little, stopped, thought about it, and proceeded to rain steadily all night. So we can definitely say our tent keeps the rain off. The next morning I took Sparrow out to investigate all the puddles we could find. There was no shortage of them. Jump, jump, jump, splash, Igor-step, splash some more. This one is just outside the toilet block. The lady allocating us a spot looked at my belly, looked at the small child and said "You'd like to be close to the toilets, wouldn't you?" and put us right next door. I was pretty happy with that. Their baby room was only a few metres from the tent, so it was easy to wash Sparrow off in the bench-bath there any time we needed to.

By about nine am or so the rain had mostly stopped, so we had an hour to get the tent down and try to work out how to fold it up again and get mud and rain off before checkout time. We didn't do much for breakfast as I'd intended to make hot water for tea and porridge on the camping stove and that just wasn't as convenient as it could have been. So here we're having second breakfast at the main bakery in town. We got there a couple of minutes before they opened and there was a crowd waiting. I thought it was funny that they were selling pies, pasties and dessert slices but no actual bread. No scones, croissants, buns or anything like that which was sort of what we'd been hoping for. Must be something about their Sunday morning trade. But Sparrow and I didn't mind sharing a pie. She was especially happy that this pie *looked* like pies are supposed to on the inside, with all the mysterious bits of brown stuff swimming in gravy, and ate heaps of it. After this we talked about going exploring further, but opted to just head home. We were all a bit tired, home wasn't far away, James was still fighting off the cold he got last week, it was a bit cold and wet for going back to the beach or playing at the river. We could have stopped at the Jirrahlinga Wildlife Sanctuary but decided that we were all happy having a quiet day. We got to test out the tent, which was the main thing. And Sparrow was pretty happy about the whole experience, she's a good little traveller.