Day 3
Monday, 16th March 2015
This morning we had the usual works for breakfast again - bacon, bread, milk, cereals and fruits. We planned a picnic lunch at Caversham Wildlife Park for today.
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| Cooking sausages for today's lunch - obviously I'm fascinating by the length, haha! |
The drive to Caversham took about 30 mins drive.
Caversham Wildlife Park is part of the larger Whiteman Park. There's nothing much to see or do in Whiteman Park unless you plan to cycle or have a picnic there. The parks are unlike United Kingdom's, and from what I was told, the land was once from the deep seabed, therefore it's not conducive for plants to grow. And that's why we don't see green green grass and pretty wild flowers, except for some patches which are watered.
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| Our drive was pleasant. 30 minutes is a good time which is not too long although both kids were excited to see the animals and already asking "Are we there yet?" in the car, to which Daddy replied he can't go any faster because of the speed limit. ;P Anyway, just enjoy the clouds, kids! Our favourite game in the car is "Guess Who Am I?" always initiated by William. |
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| We hopped onto this very, very old bus for a tour on the Whiteman Express. It's free and supposed to take 1 hour to round Whiteman Park but because we had a group of Cambodian tourists on our bus, their tour guide became the translator and our tour was extended to 2 hours! |
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| The Whiteman Express is run by volunteers - our guide was a kind lady from England volunteering twice a week of her time, whilst our bus driver was also a volunteer. Forgotten both their names. We were asked if we wanted to hop to the driver seat - why, of course! |
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| A grand old melaleuca tree. |
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| Melaleuca / tea tree leaves which if you rubbed on your skin will leave a pleasant smell. It's antiseptive and anti fungal. On the right is a close up of the multi layers on the bark. |
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| Vic and William occupied themselves with coloring and simple activities which they get to pin up on the display. They did this whilst waiting for the guide to finish |
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| Entering the park now... we paid AUD75 entrance fees for the four of us. All visitors are allowed to take as much pictures as they like, and entrance fees include unlimited animal feed for the kangaroos. (but this is redundant, later you will know why...) |
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| Snobbish parakeets |
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| Along the way to the farm show, we saw flying foxes hung upside down |
We headed straight for the
Farm Show
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| A simple and short sheep sheering show. Vic asked me if the sheep felt pain, because she thinks it's cruel to hold and shave the sheep like this. |
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| He volunteered to milk the cow, but instead was given a bottle of milk to feed a kid. Haha! |
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| William should be experienced in this by now... having first volunteered to milk a cow during a school excursion when he was 4yo in 2012 |
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| If I recall right, this is Vic's first time attempting to milk a cow. Well done! |
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| The working sheepdog. Looks like a mongrel in our country. |
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| Carryng another kind of kid. My, it's so hard to get a chance because the guy was obviously picking his guests - some form of discrimination maybe. Who cares, we're on holiday. |
Next, we checked out
Meet The Wombat & Friends. This is a brief introduction to some farm animals which later allows us to go up close and personal with the animals for phototaking and touching. Here are some animals we saw...
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| A little bit of advertisement here... These photos are taken with my new gift from hubby, the iPhone 6+, ahem ahem... so sharp and so beautiful. |
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| William touched a baby python snake - he's so proud about this and even talked about this back home in Malaysia. Mummy have to bring him back to reality that snacks are dangerous. In my world, ALL snakes are dangerous and we should just avoid them if we see one on the lose. This baby python probably had its venom taken out already and well fed before his public appearance. |
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| Vic needed to borrow courage from Daddy. Obviously, mummy had none when it came to snakes. Haha. |
And then there's
Meet The Koala session where there were about 6-8 koalas hanging freely on the tree branches, and we could only gently touch the one or two designated ones. The rest are only hanging around (literally!) for photo session, but don't expect them all to pose for you. ; P
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| It was quite a challenge to get the koalas to look at our direction, but patience paid off. This guy here was just looking straight into my camera for minutes! I took many pictures even with hubby and kids in it. I think it's the same guy that started shitting when I stood next to it for my turn in the camera : / |
Finally, the much awaited
Meet and Feed the Kangaroos. Vic and Will are just eagerly waiting to feed the kangaroos. This session is available the whole day without any specific feeding time, so we decided to cover the other sessions first to maximise our time there. In doing so, you can imagine how well fed and overfed these animals are.
Ironically, a keeper shared with us that the roos have self control when it came to eating, and once full, they will stop eating. I believe that is true, as many were seen just lying around on the grass and soil, some with food laid just inches from their mouth and they won't even eat. Some roos looked dead! Such a disappointment and a far cry from our
our first experience in Melbourne.
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| From sleeping or lazing kangaroos.... |
Nearing 5pm, there was some music played in the distant and then I noticed all these sleeping roos stood up. Those bending over to eat also stood up. All looked in the same direction. I think I was the only one who found this odd.
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| to standing in attention! |
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| Not moving for minutes! I just went around snapping pictures of all standing kangaroos |
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| Vic kept feeding and feeding, like she had a quota to meet. I had to remind her to slow down and move around to feed other roos |
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| William found a favourite very quickly in the form of a young joey. He wanted to take it home as his pet. |
After this, we left Caversham quite satisfied. With still time on our side, we headed to...
Brighton Beach! Actually we were here by accident as we wanted to look for Scarborough Beach, but our GPS did not register that, so hubby used his internal GPS to bring us to this beach, which we later found out was just a couple of kilometres from our intended destination. Oh well, we stayed on as the beach is probably the same - same sunset, same waves and same type of sand.
This beach is quiet and we spent a good 30minutes to 1 hour here before the sunset and it started to get cold.
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| Footprints of hubby's and mine |
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| Sunset was so beautiful, serene and majestic. Just for that few minutes, we stand in awe of God's creation |
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| Making footprints by the beach and watching the evil waves washed them away... |
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| Playing with the waves... it was just so much fun to watch them run in and out! |
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| Amazing time... playing with sand and water. Wishing we could freeze such happy moments |
With so much energy spent and the temperature dropping fast, our tummies were calling to be filled. We had on our itinerary two places in mind... the first was
Pizacca which unfortunately was closed, so we drove a little bit to find our second choice,
Buona Vita Organic Pizza - made from real organic ingredients, so they claim. Don't be fooled by the simple, take-away front, which reminded us of our student Chinese take-away days... haha! Taste great and made fresh.
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| This shop has only one table and a few chairs. We sat by the display window where we can watch our car parked outside. |
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| Pizza with huge kalamata olives, pineapples, ham and the works |
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| Pizza with kalamata olives, anchovies, mushroom and some other stuff. |
Got home, got the kids to bath and clean up. Vic did some music theory homework that she brought along and William read some brochures. Daddy planed for the next day and mummy did another round of laundry.
Was a great, fulfilling day, and we all slept happy! Tomorrow... dolphins!
