Our Family Holiday in July (day 1)

On Friday the 6th of July at around 10am we embarked on our one night away holiday. We hadn't even left for our adventure yet and I already liked the idea of going away for only one night, because there wasn't much to pack : )

 This is what we were looking forward to doing.... However it wasn't so. We packed our two days so full of fun things to do that we came home more tired than when we left.

We were all very excited. It was a beautiful winter day, clear blue skies, no cold wind. It actually felt like Spring.

Our destination for today was first to head out to Mole Creek then onto Cradle Mountain. On our way out to Mole Creek we stopped to visit the one and only G.N.B (Great Nanny Bounds). We briefly saw Great Poppy, as he was heading out to a Funereal. Our visit with the G.N.B was nice, we had a quick chat (which was amazing heheh) and the kids got a couple of snake lollies each. We love G.N.B and Great Poppy.
G.N.B gave us some money so we could get an icecream from the Chudleigh Honey Farm.

The kids liked the Honey farm, they enjoyed watching the bees flying into and out of the hive, that is displayed inside the shop. They weren't too keen on trying the sample honey but when we said there is a pink honey (raspberry) they were keen to try that one. Sam fell inn love with the Ainseed honey and purchased a jar.

We each got an icecream. I got pistachio, Hanisi had chocolate, Milly had raspberry (the pink one) and Sam got two flavours, one was peach and I can't remember the other flavour.  Sam was in love with his peach flavour icecream so much, he took a photo of it. I must admit it was a really nice flavour.

We all went outside to eat our icecreams. The kids enjoyed running around pretending to be bees. They each got a bee pencil to take home.

Then it was on to our next destination, Trowunna Wildlife park.When we arrived at the wildlife park we had only just got out of the car, when Milly asked, "where are the kangaroos?" We explained to her that we had to go inside the park first to see the Kangaroos, there were none in the car park. We entered the park and Milly did not stop asking where the Kangaroos where until she finally saw them.

Milly, as you can imagine was very excited to see the kangaroos and couldn't wait to feed them.

 Hanisi on the other hand was a bit unsure about how she felt about them.

 But with a little bit of guidance from Dad, her confidence built

 and she was feeding them on her own. Milly was a natural. It took very little coaching from us for her to do it by herself. 

 It didn't take long and they had all become friends

 We think this Kangaroo looks like a very pretty lady with her long eye lashes she just needs some lippy.


I put Millys' Jacket on one of the Kangaroos, for a bit of a joke. Sam, I and the other people at the park thought it was funny. However when the Kangaroo started hopping away with Millys' jacket on, Milly started crying and Hanisi started chasing the Kangaroo, yelling, "give back Millys 'Jacket." Unfortunately they didn't see the funny side nor did I get a photo of the Kangaroo in a pink Jacket. But we thought it was quite amusing.

Everyone else in the park managed to get a picture of it except us :(

 We took this picture without even realising that this Kangaroo had 2 babies. Strange place to put a second baby.

We met some interesting animals at the wildlife park, some more memorable than others.

 This is Kelvin the Kookaburra, officially named so by Hanisi. Kelvin and Annette are friends that we have known for years and just so happen to be our neighbours now. Kelvin has an artificial eye, but recently he has had some complications with it so is wearing a patch to help with the healing process. Well Hanisi is fixated with Kelvin's missing eye.

For family home evening we made some little flower people to give to people who we thought might need some cheering up. Kelvin was one of those people, and Hanisi wanted to make his flower. We had some googly eyes to put on them, and Hanisi insisted that Kelvin's flower person only have one eye.

So because this Kookaburra only had one eye naturally it was called Kelvin.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day at the park and all the animals were out getting as warm as they possibly could from the sun's rays. This is the position that we found most of the Tasmanian Devils.  

We were lucky enough to meet Suzie the Wombat. Suzie was a young Wombat that one of the workers at the park presented to the visitors  and gave a brief run down on their fascinating features.

This is the grumpy Goose, from Cape Barron. She had made a nest on the side of the path, and loved to hiss at people as they walked by. There was an egg in her nest which she was protecting. But Daddy being Daddy got a bit to close and the goose pecked at his trousers.

We ended the day at the wildlife park with a final feed of the Kangaroos, a play at the park and a trip to the loo.

Next stop was the Marakoopa Caves. We checked the times of the tours on our phone, and I read that the last tour was at 4.pm. We arrived at the caves at 3:05, to find that the last cave tour, during the summer months, is at 4 and the last one in winter was at 3.pm. Oh well, so we continued on our way to Cradle Mountain, our place of refuge for the night.

It was a long windy trip. The kids slept most of the way, I drove, and Mariah vomited. She doesn't like long windy roads, and this was an extremely long extremely windy road. She made it most of the way bust lost her lunch at the last corner. Poor thing.. She felt better afterwards, so I said she should have done it earlier so she could have enjoyed the trip.

Here we are at our mountain top cabin. The girls called it our new Little House. They loved it and cried when we had to leave. Milly asked the other day if we could go back to our little house with the pretty flower curtains and the bunk beds. Milly really liked the flower curtains, commenting several times about how pretty they looked. They each had their own set of bunk beds which was the real highlight for them. Climbing and playing. It was a lot of fun.

We would recommend it to anyone with a  family that wanted to visit the area. They were not 5 * but they were comfortable and warm.

Before we settled down to tea, we went for a short walk down to the visitors center, where Hanisi found a big wombat minding its own business. It didn't hang around for long when two little girls started chasing it.

After tea we headed out in the dark for another walk. While walking Milly looked up and noticed all the pretty stars sparkling in the sky. We enjoyed looking at all the pretty stars.

I have a fascination with hotel blow dryers and here I am playing with the blow dryer on top of Cradle mountain.

I guess feeling the wind go across my face is as close as I can get to feeling like I am riding a motorbike on a warm summers day. 

After all the blow drying, the driving, spewing, feeding animals, and ice cream, it was time for lights out. Time to recharge the batteries and get ready for tomorrow, the second day of our adventure.(the next blog)