Archives for February 2010

Featherdale Wildlife Park

Featherdale is one of the best wildlife parks that we have visited thus far, and the experience here was much better than Sydney Wildlife Park in Darling Harbour. The park had a vast variety of Australian animals, the tamer ones like the wallaby and kangaroos roamed about freely in their areas and they are so docile that we could actually pat them! K was so keen in patting the animals that he asked me if he could also touch the ones in their enclosure. He was all excited and co-operative until we met the ‘witching hour’ of 3 p.m. (not a good time, especially when he did not get his afternoon nap for the day) and started fussing till we got him an ice-cream to end his visit on a good note.

The Rocks

He fell fast asleep once we got back to the car and did not get up till an hour and a half later when we got back to The Rocks, north of Sydney city. As it started raining when we reach our next destination, dh had to brave the rain, ran to the nearest touristy shop to get an china-made umbrella that cost AUD$17.00! After spending so much for a lousy umbrella, we really regretted that we forgot to bring our own umbrella and K’s raincoat for this trip.

While waiting for the rain to stop, we went into a French bakery shop for some tea and hot chocolate. This was first time that K got to have a cup of hot chocolate by himself. Once the rain ended, we did the quintessential touristy thing of posing for photos at The Rock’s harbour, complete with the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background. As we were walking on the wharf on the way back to the car, K started fussing and dh told him that the wharf will open up and swallow him up if he continued to misbehave. K thought for a while and said, “No such thing.” Well, looks like tall tales such as this sort will not really work too well with him. Good attempt though, dh

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The highlight of our trip to Sydney has to be the day that we visited a farm, wildlife park and The Rocks (again) all in a single day. Not that I was the cruel parent that wanted to maximise our vacation by cramming too many activities for a tot in one day. But rather, rest for K was much easier to be scheduled in, when we took long drives to visit attractions out of the city. Being that easy traveller, K often took his naps in the car during our long drives and was full of energy when we got to our destination.

Animal Farm Dural

The visit to the farm in Dural, that was about an hour drive outside the city, provided many firsts for Kyle. We have been reading so much about farms, but never really got to experience it first hand. I was really looking forward to visit Golden Ridge animal farm, as it was a first time at a farm for me as well.

Our visit to the farm was the first time that K…

From this visit to the farm, dh and I realised that K has no fear at all for many kinds of animals. Often, fear is a learnt response for a child, it does help that adults around him show no fear for the animals and the child will learn to embrace new experiences / interaction with new animals.

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We were back on another Sydney beach in the afternoon, after dropping Nana and Grand-dad off at the airport for their flight back to Singapore. This time round we took a short drive from the airport to Manly beach, so as to visit the Manly Ocean world; another of Sydney’s attraction which features many Australian’s sea creatures. Instead of getting all enthusiastic about the sea creatures in the Ocean World, K much preferred playing with the sand on the beach. Once again, I was totally not prepared for K to swim so he only managed a 15 minutes play on the sand and was very disappointed when he had to leave. He was sobbing and insisted that we go back to Bondi beach right then. Dh and I discussed that we should visit Bondi Beach the next few days, before we returned to Singapore.

By then, K was feeling hungry and asking for a sandwich. We went for early dinner and settled with sandwiches and good but expensive fast food; Nandos, to fill our stomachs. K was feeling so tired after his meal that he fell asleep on the table. We were feeling a little guilty for wearing him out with the day’s activities and decided not to wake him up. He took a half an hour power nap and was all rearing to go afterwards.

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