Greenhills Park - Adventuring We Come

It's been School Holidays here in Australia last week and this week, and whilst the weather's been a bit hit and miss, and I've been at work, I did manage to take Thursday off so that we could hit the road and enjoy a family moment whilst the weather was good (28 degreesC and sunny). Our idea?... to head down to Victor Harbor to visit Greenhills Adventure Park.

Now Victor Harbor is about 95+km from Adelaide, and it can take 1.5 hours (approx) to drive down there in good traffic. It's actually one of the big holiday attraction sites in South Australia, and is the focus of many holiday pilgrimages. Greenhills Adventure Park is just on the outskirts of the town, and for the three of us (not including our daughter) there was a $100 entry fee. That, as the sign says, entitles you to do most of the rides and activities...  for the whole day. Today, as we had business in town (and because we're notorious slow-starters) we arrive around 11am.

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The main attractions in the park are the slides... our son of course loved them. The wave ride was his first turn,.. just grab a piece of carpet and launch yourself down. 

Don't forget to stop though...

After a few quick rides, L-kun hit the jack-pot... the water slides (of which there are two). They may not be the biggest or the scariest in the State, but they looked fun (especially for a 5 year old).

And as our son loooooooves water, this was definitely his most favourite attraction.

Over and over and over again...

Of course - on this slide, stopping has only one logical conclusion. Splash!

And no sooner had the droplets hit the ground and he was racing up the (many) stairs to begin the process again.

And again....

And again....

And even though he was shivering quite a bit (it was warm, but I'm sure the water was cold) he insisted that he continue on. No time for a towel mum! Got to go again!

And whilst that was happening, we were enjoying another sort of family moment, with our daughter. Now proudly sitting up! All by herself... cutie!

And was really having a good time looking around (what's not clear in this shot was just how many people were at the Park... lots of them).

L-kun and I then tried out the canoes down along the Hindmarsh River. Hindmarsh River may sound large... it is, most definitely not. Indeed the water level was particularly low  - so much so that they had warning signs up at the top where you got your life-jackets. And whilst the water was low, I had not quite expected the sand bars across the river (at points there was perhaps only 10 cm of water... which meant for parts you had to physically pull yourself across the sand bar (or like we did, use your paddles as mountaineering poles).

 

We had been gone for about 20mins (in which time Daddy started to learn out to actually use a canoe, through trial and error... mostly error) when I decided to turn back. That didn't meet to my sons pleasure however - as he insisted that EVERYONE was going to the end, and that we had to as well. The end, however was the sea. 3 hours away. I explained that to my son... but 3 hours has a different meaning to a 5 year old.

On eventually returning (tired), the assistant asked us (in all seriousness), had we seen any snakes? - apparently the day before several river snakes had tried to get into people's canoes. Nice to know that AFTER we got back. Seriously I was a little shocked... I mean, they have signs up everywhere that you use the rides at your own risk - but I can't see that this absolves them of their duty of care to the customers. A bit of information, peoples, goes a long way!

There are other rides/activities, but L-kun loves slides... 

Even when they don't quite go to plan....

But if at first you don't succeed....

And as the sun started sinking, L-kun and Mum grabbed their life jackets and headed out on a paddle boat (Daddy had learned his lesson).

And they were off... for some quality time together. Mum the muscle, and L-kun the driver. They made for an impressive team.

And even with only 15 mins before closing, L-kun insisted on another run at the water slide. It must have been cold, but he really REALLY enjoyed it. And just to show that he wasn't too worried about the cold (he laughs in the face of danger... and colds) he grabbed an ice-cream for himself too!

In the end - it was a fantastic though exhausting day... even for Daddy who didn't do that much, it was exhausting. I think we can definitely recommend Greenhills, and especially as the weather starts to warm up. It's just a shame that we didn't have a chance to see much of Victor Harbor as well. Perhaps next time....

Spring Has Sprung - Sakura-Style

It's been a long time since last I posted... and for good (and bad) reasons. Firstly, I've been pretty busy this time around with our daughter, C-chan, who has just clocked up her 7th month! Secondly, work has been a bit hectic of late (as it should be). But finally, I've just been spending what online time I've had on G+ rather than blogging.

That, I hope (and keep telling myself) will change. And so, let's start the ball rolling with something that happened just now. Cherry Blossom season. Well, actually, the cherry trees have been blossoming around Adelaide for a while now, but our cherry tree has only just hit peak now. So I thought I'd just liven up blog with a few of my shots of our own Sakura down South....

Hanami - the Japanese tradition of going out to watch the cherry blossoms (amongst others)... but is really just a good excuse to get totally drunk with your friends and workmates...  is a tradition in our house. Normally it means us setting up a picnic rug and table under the blossoms and eating a homemade picnic hamper, and me of course knocking back a couple of beers (suitably Japanese in origin).

This year was looking a little grim weather-wise, and indeed it's been blowing a gale, and when not blowing a gale, it's been raining, then sun-shining, then back to the gale part. Thankfully, today (a public holiday here, for Labour Day) the weather turned a treat. Beautiful sunshine, not too hot, not too cold. Just right (though it did get a little chilly later in the day). So we quickly revised our plans and grabbed the picnic gear. Hanami time was here again!

Now I was going to also throw down a few of my favourite pics from the season... in no particular order. But these were shot over two days, and the weather really did change around a lot (hence why you will notice a very dark grey sky in some of the shots).

Anyway, hope you enjoy!

 

Okuizome.... 100 Days of Happiness

Well, this may be a little late (as our daughter C-chan celebrated her 100th day a couple of weeks ago now), but I thought we'd share this day here... Now okuizome is hard to translate direct, but is often translated as something like first eating in Japanese. The celebration in Japan is to wish for the child to grow up always without hunger... and is often also done with hagatame, or teeth strengthening ceremony. It's clear that some Japanese traditions stem from a time (not that long ago) when times were quite a good deal harsher, and you could count your luck by how many of your teeth you retained. Okuizome is all about the first (pretend) feast for the young baby... though if the truth be told it is as much our feast (if not more so).

The centre-piece of the celebration is the fish tai, which (as far as we can tell) is equivalent to bream. Now in Adelaide, bream is normally black bream, so that's what we bought (please check out the Fish Factory on Grand Junction Road for a good place to buy fresh fish in Adelaide). The fish is scaled and gutted, and skewered lengthwise as well as being heavily salted prior to being oven-baked.

Although I have to admit that bream isn't my favourite fish.... it has a reasonably strong flavour made even more stronger with the salting.

The cooked fish is served with a number of other dishes...

There's osekihan, a celebratory red-rice dish made with azuki beans... this is a traditional meal given for good luck in Japan. Pumpkin is also a popular dish for wishing fortune as well - the association with good luck with money due to the gold colour I guess.

And T-chan also made some delicious osuimono fish broth, along with a dainty little salad.

And then there umeboshi (not necessary for the dish, but salted plums are always a delicious addition) and a very special ingredient... a stone (collected by L-kun from Anstey Hill Recreation Park... so it could also have been a dinosaur bone...wink wink). The stone is there, as mentioned, as a token for wishing strong teeth to the child. In retrospect, not sure that this is the most hygienic of traditions - especially as it's wishing good health and all.

We also had some Taiyaki, a cooked pancake in the shape of, once again, a bream. The pancake is filled normally with an anko paste (also made from the azuki beans). Actually, these were given to us by a family friend who had found a Korean version of it... as it's hard to find the real Japanese dish here in Adelaide (though why it's easier to find the Korean ones is a bit of a mystery to me). The anko paste is a sweet, but it still retains it's beaniness... and is a very common flavouring in Japanese sweets.

So that's okuizome in a nut-shell.... apart from one thing. Now obviously it ISN'T C-chan's first meal. No, we're not that bad! The point is that she should pretend to eat the meal. This isn't as easy as you might think... no, taking candy from a baby is easy in comparison to pretending to give a baby food. Even if they haven't eaten real food yet. The job of faux-feeding is up to Daddy who obliges with the required seriousness. He of course knows where the food will really end up... in our bellies. As for C-chan, she was a real trooper (for the most part), and suffered our tom-foolery quite well. I think she would have been quite happy to have really eaten the food... this could be a good sign!

Anyway, she's well past 100 days now... and rapidly approach 4 months old. She's sleeping well most of the time (we had our first all-through-the-night sleep last weekend), but she sometimes reverts to waking up 1-2 times during the night. She continues growing at a prodigious rate, to the point that T-chan is starting to suffer sore back and shoulder from the weight. That's a very happy pain however, and every hour at night less sleep is still a hugely welcome blessing. Happy okuizome C-chan... the first of many happy family feasts to come.

Anstey Hill... Adeventures Of A Dinsosaur Hunter

Today was a beautiful Winter's Day in Adelaide... though it only reached 15 degrees (or thereabouts). It was fine, and not even a breeze. Well, as we'd all been cooped up inside for too long, we decided to go out for the afternoon. And to my surprise, L-kun wanted to go bush-walking.  I decided we'd have a look at Anstey Hill Recreation Park, one that we'd not been to before. So off we went... looking for adventure.

The park itself can be found at the end of Lower North East Road and Grand Junction Roads, in the foothills of the North East suburbs, about 18km from the city centre.

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There are a number of lookouts, and the view towards the city is good... though from this vantage point you might actually suspect that Adelaide was a city of trees, with the city centre perched far into the distance.

Now, whilst you can grab information from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (see link above), there's not much of a map that goes with it. The Park is about 380 hectares, and much of it used to be either quarry or (of all things) a nursery, as well as semi-rural land. It's been turned into a Recreation Park to ensure that it doesn't get developed and eventually returns to something like it's natural state. Not having been to the park before, I though the "Geological Hike" sounded interesting for L-kun... even though it was rated as a moderate bush walk... this can be reached from Gate 9 on the SW corner of the park.

Scanned imaged from Department of Environment and Natural Resources

The Park itself is quite nice, though quite different from the other parks in/around Adelaide. It has a feel of a slowly evolving rural landscape... and is a good mix of open land, and bushland, with a range of hills and valleys.

And even though the Winter's been wet, and the drought an increasingly distant memory, every where there are signs of it.

But also of the new life returning to the landscape.

For reasons I'll explain shortly, it was difficult to take photos today, and the wild-flowers hadn't really appeared in all their glory yet.

But it was still a very pleasant environment, and not at all like the thick scrub we would often walk through.

The great thing about the Geological Hike is the fact that there's a mix of views of the city, the old "gun emplacement" and the quarries to walk through. The rocks in the quarry are old - as they say - as the Hills. About 450million years ago the sands were turned into a mountain... and the park also spans the Eden-Burnside fault line which marks the transition from Adelaide Plains to Mt Lofty Ranges.

And the quarries are fun to walk around, observing through the cut in the mountainside, the history of Adelaide through a geologists eyes.

Actually, one of the unexpected things that happened during the day was that L-kun decided that he'd go Dinosaur Bone hunting/ I think he'd taken to heart a dinosaur show he'd seen on tv a while back, and all of a sudden everything he saw on the ground was a dinosaur bone. And I mean everything!

As for myself, I got into the act.... but you can also see that this wasn't the only thing that I was concerned about. I was the official baby carrier for our bushwalk adventure, and this was the first time we'd tried out the baby carrier with C-chan. So I wasn't really able to enjoy the freedom to photograph as I would like, but I like to think that it was a shared compromise, and a shared moment of peaceful togetherness. Especially as C-chan fell asleep through most of it.

We had a great time - and L-kun brought back a bag (yes, I mean a big bag) of "dinosaur bones". I don't have the heart to tell him that they were just rocks, but I figure, what do I know... somewhere in that bag was the remains of our deep deep past. Whether it was bones of long-gone animals or the bones of our world. Either way, I loved that he was so excited about it, and it certainly made for a more interesting walk.