Another Camping Trip! March 28-29

We headed to Grampians National Park on Saturday morning, only 30 minutes later than we should have. We meet some friends of ours in a town about 2 hours away and then head to the park together. Lilly spent the entire trip asking if we were there. Is this it? Do we turn here? Is this where we hike? It was fun! Seth thinks he must be getting payback for his childhood.

So we met our friends, Wayne and Lan, and had a quick lunch before venturing off toward the park. Lilly fell asleep as we entered the town right outside the park. So while everyone piled out and tried to get information, I read a magazine so Lilly could get a little bit of sleep. The first information center was for the town so we had to find one for the park. Once found we discussed options for camping and decided where to go hiking for the day.

We got our gear to hike and began walking up a rocky mountain path. I took Lilly in the hiking pack. It was sort of a crazy hike and there were rails and stairs in the first section. Our friend, Wayne, had been here a few years before and said the rails were all new.

It took us about 2 hours to get to the top of the lookout. Lilly only walked about 10 minutes of that but if she would have continued walking it would have been 4 hours. The walk down only took 30 minutes and Seth took Lilly for this part. We went a slightly different way so we didn't have to climb over anything. I know I was tired on the way up but poor Seth had jello legs from going down hill with the kid!

Next stop was our campsite. Seth and I got there first while our friends stopped at the grocery store. We turned off the main road and it was another 8 km down a dirt road. It was rather curvy and part of the time was spent looking down the side of a mountain (no railing)! The camping sites were much bigger than most places and each had a picnic table and a metal fire ring.

The fire ring surprised me the most. In 2006 a large bush fire swept through the park. There are telltale signs of this fire and there are still numerous projects going on to restore areas.

Seth and I put up the tent (Lilly had fallen asleep in the car) and got everything ready to cook our dinner. Once Lilly woke up we took her to the tent to rest. At this point I knew she was getting sick and didn't want to push her at being outside too much. Our friends arrived and set up camp. They brought several pounds of meat but we hadn't really discussed the food situation and so we had also brought our own food. Oh well. We convinced Lilly to come out for dinner although she wasn't hungry. She got our friend Wayne to color with her for a while. After dinner she headed back into the tent and watched a video. She loves camping because she thinks it always involves watching videos in the tent now. Our bad.

Meanwhile we got a nice fire going and we introduced our Aussie friends to the S'More. I think they liked the different parts but they did say it was rather sweet. Um yeah, that is the point. They were delicious. Maybe I failed to mention that I had been to USA Foods (which you can imagine what sorts of food they stock) and purchased graham crackers (which they don't have here) and marshmallows (which are different here).

I ended up going to bed a little early since the kid wasn't feeling well and didn't really want to be left alone in the tent when it was so dark. We had left the lantern close by but she still wasn't all that happy.

Next morning we had a little brekkie and cleaned up our tent and the area. As we were finishing up two wallabies wandered into our site for a little breakfast. We were able to get pretty close and got a couple of pictures and video. In case you haven't heard of them, wallabies are similar to kangaroos only they are smaller. If you ask an Aussie what the difference is, all they can tell you is size.

We wanted to go see a waterfall so we started back up the dirt road. Our friends pulled off at another lookout and we took a quick 2 km hike (round trip). There was a nice view but Lilly was not happy at this point and just wanted to cuddle with me on a bench. Seth carried her to the lookout and I ended up carrying her back. I didn't get to see much but Seth did take some good pictures.

Off to the waterfall and another little hike. The hike wouldn't have been bad but we went down to the base of the falls. It was a nice resting place but the falls weren't very big. Wayne said that it used to be much bigger and falls looked more like a large blanket of water rather than the smaller hoses. Did I mention Seth carried Lilly down to the bottom? Guess who carried her up?

Last stop on our trip was to the Giant Koala! This Koala stands at 14 meters high and was built in 1989. I'm hoping we get to see more Giant stuff while we are here. This was definitely a high light!

I did forget one last thing! Here's a picture of the next car we will be getting when we trade in our Mondeo! It's just called a Ute (short for utility vehicle) but I like to call it the new El Camino!

Grampians Camping March 2009

Wandering around the City - March 25

Our library is pretty good. I don't know if it is as good as the ones in Dearborn but we really like it and go at least once a week. Lilly and I met Mem Fox back in December and this month we had the opportunity to meet another author, Jeannette Rowe. She put on a presentation that was geared toward young school age children. She mostly did some drawing for them but she did read a few of her books including one that was at the printers getting ready to be released.

I was asked by a friend of mine to help her cousin with her child's school project. They were sending a small stuffed dog, named Freddy, around the world. I have the puppy and have been showing him the sights (which is why you'll see him in the pictures in the next several entries).

Lilly and I took Freddy to the Melbourne Museum for Victoria's largest Playgroup. Basically they just invited everyone that belongs to Playgroup Victoria to come to the museum (you have to join the group in order to join in playgroups around the state, mostly you are paying for insurance, i guess). We got some freebies and played outside for a little while. The picture shows a section of the museum that houses the children's area. It is a giant cube that sits at an angle on one point.

Next we took the tram down to the State Library of Victoria. I have seen advertisements for their children's area. When we got in there I was a little disappointed because it was a mostly empty room. They had two large screen televisions for X-Box and Playstation (I think, I had to keep the kids away) to play games (although one was a footy game!). There were also several groupings of computers which were being used by teenagers to play online games. There were a couple of small shelves for children's books and some puzzles. So we sat and read and then did a couple of puzzles.

Lilly and I took a tour of the library. They did have a pretty cool dome room. I'm sure it had a specific name but I was trying to keep Lilly entertained while we saw everything. They had some very old books as well as interesting history of Victoria and Melbourne. There was a larger exhibit of Ned Kelly. He was an outlaw in Victoria history but has become this legend. Very weird!

Just Lilly in March

Thought I would give the family a few pics of the little one.

We've been having some sleeping issues for months. Not sleeping through the night has become quite the problem. I told Lilly I would paint her nails if she slept through the night. It took another week but she finally did it! She's had her nails painted twice and her toes painted. She took the liberty of painting her foot but that was not because she slept through the night!

Lilly loved the idea of getting a ballet class when she was potty trained. She got this idea from some friends back in Michigan and I went with it. I hadn't brought it up but after a week of big girl underwear she reminded me. I looked around at different dance studios and Lilly tried some different classes. We found one that will be nice if she sticks with it for a few years. And of all places, the owner graduated from good old Copley High School (Seth's high school)! She is Australian but her family lived in Ohio while she was a teenager.

And finally, we had a little family project of making a little garden. Just something fun to do. It is late in the season to plant anything but some of the flowers are doing quite nicely. We had to bring them inside but I hoping we'll have something to show Lilly.

First Camping Trip - March 8-9

We finally pulled out the tent, sleeping bags, and little stove and took off for one night of camping under the stars.

We drove south around the eastern side of Melbourne and headed to the Mornington Peninsula You'll see that Melbourne sits at the top of a bay.


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We drove down the coast of the bay and stopped at a caravan park just before Sorrento.

We got the last non-electric site and it was just a little slab with a hill on it. There was another site between us and the road but no one stayed there. We only took one picture of our tent and one picture of some other sites. The other sites consisted of 4 bedroom tent suites, campers with satellite dishes and grills that would make Tim the Toolman jealous. We just had our little tiny two-man tent that takes up a couple feet and they had every patch of grass covered with gadgets and sleeping space.

Anyway, once we got our tent up, we decided to go into Sorrento and look around. This cute town reminds me of a much smaller version of Mackinaw City. We walked around for a little while and decided to scrap our dinner plans of grilled cheese on our camping burner and had pizza instead.

We headed back to the camp grounds and headed to the beach for a walk. It was chilly and we had jeans on, but Lilly insisted on getting her feet wet. That was fine, until now she has been very cautious of the water because usually we are on ocean side with very large waves. Of course, she wanted to walk out as far as her jeans would allow and that meant I had to follow. Cold feet!!

The sun was setting and there isn't much to do when you can't start a fire. So we got all ready for bed and cozied up with Wall-E and some M&M's. Seth didn't make it through the entire movie but Lilly was ready to party once it was over. We read her a story and had to convince her that it was time to sleep.

The next morning we packed up and drove to the furthest point we were allowed to drive into Point Nepean National Park. Hiked to the beach and ate lunch (turns out the burner wasn't actually brought with us). We had the rest of our green M&M's which we hadn't realized the night before were only green. We saw some dolphins swim by, that was really neat and pretty much the only wildlife we saw. We also got to see 2 fighter jets escorting an old military cargo plane as it was on its way to be decommissioned. Not a bad place to eat our lunch.

We then spent a couple of hours walking around an old fort that was used to keep unwanted boats from entering the bay. There were signs all over that said to stick to the paths because there were possible unexploded ammunition. That was nice.

We finally headed home along with all the other campers after a long weekend (it was Labour Day)!

Sorrento and Point Nepean

Lovin' the Zoo - Feb 18

Another zoo visit to the Melbourne Zoo. Love that place and it's nice that it's just a short train ride away. We have gone to a friend's house and taken a tram from there a couple of times.

We went to listen to a zoo-keeper's talk at the tiger exhibit. The keepers take the tigers out (probably into their inside homes) and put up rabbit bait throughout the area. When they let the tigers out, they go on a little hunt. The zoo-keepers then talk about eating habits, habitats, and the problems the tigers are having today. Very interesting and very informative. The second picture is the tiger getting a rabbit that had been hung in a tree - not a great picture.

We had to go see the elephants since we were in the same area. Lilly and her friend Alex love sitting on all the wooden and stone elephants. I think we'll have a whole album of these!

Let's go Swimming - Feb 17

There are several swimming pools in the area with two in our 'city'. Our city has a Leisure Center (just like a community center with work out areas and pools) and then an outdoor pool for the summer months. The Coburg Olympic Swimming Pool is pretty impressive and has four different pools. There is a diving well (but I don't know that it is open) and a 50 meter lap pool. There is also a learners pool which is about 0.6 meters deep and a baby pool at 0.3 meters deep.

The weather was sunny and warm and I thought Lilly and I would branch out and try the pool. I packed lunches and we walked over to the pool. We arrived soon after it opened and we were pretty much the only ones there.

We started off in the baby pool because it was covered. It was chilly!! Lilly walked around and played with the toys she brought.

Next she wanted to try the deeper pool. It was freezing!! Lilly got right in and started walking around (very close to me). She eventually slipped and ended up under the water. She was fine, didn't panic and tried to get her feet underneath herself. I ended up picking her up and from then she wanted to hold my hand which meant me going deeper.

After a good hour we got our for lunch. Lilly chowed so she could go back in but I made her wait for me. Sorry, we didn't wait an hour before we got back in. We lasted all of 20 minutes after that. Lilly started shivering and then couldn't stop. She told me she was fine, that she had stopped, she need to be in the water. I let her go for a little but just couldn't stand to listen to her teeth chattering!!

Cricket - February 15 - Who can give me some Rules?

Seth found a deal that we could go see a cricket match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for free just by showing our train ticket. The match we were to see was part of a 3 day test match. Don't ask me to explain it - I'm just telling you what I was told! So we got there and looked high and low for empty seats. Ok, take a close look at the pictures. There were less than 100 people visible to us. So unless there were a plethora of people on the level right above, people weren't all that interested even with the idea of free! We got there in time to watch for about a half hour and then they took a lunch break. Who breaks for lunch? We'll have to go with someone who knows what is going on and can explain it, then we won't make fun of it as much!

The last pic here is a picture of the city. Not a great one but I was hoping to show the amount of smoke in the air from the bush fires. Of course, I'll have to go back to the MCG so I can get another picture of a clear day. It was a day where we could definitely smell the fires and the streets were very smoky.