Big Submarine

Australia is full of 'big things'. If you want a full and comprehensive list you can click here. Essentially if you’ve got a café, restaurant or small town in Australia that’s not doing too well financially then you crack out the wood and papermache and build yourself a giant banana, guitar, fish, pineapple etc and the people will flock from miles around to see it.

I’ve managed to see a few ‘big things’ during my time here, but at some point will have to plan an extensive Australia-wide tour in order to see every giant lobster, strawberry and penguin that the country has to offer.

Holbrook on the Hume highway doesn’t exactly have a ‘big thing’, in its truest sense. It does have a submarine though. It’s remarkable that there’s absolute no nautical or naval link to the town at all, it just appears that the town secured a decommissioned submarine in 1995 from the Australian Royal Navy in the hope that passers by would stop off for a cup of tea rather than zoom up the Hume Highway.

I actually feel that their plan was a bit ill conceived as the town is due to be by-passed in 2012, and I'm slightly dubious about whether the sight of a grounded submarine will be enough to make people pull off the new highway. Anyway here's a picture I took on Saturday morning.

Weston Park

A nice weekend spent at the Garden Centre in Piallago and Weston Park. Despite the weather growing colder Audrey has taken to wearing her princess/ballerina dress pretty much round the clock. Here's some pics.

Audrey and Eli enjoying a black swan moment in Weston Park

When Gordon met the Queen

Electionballs

courtesy of this week's Private Eye magazine..

A mouse took a walk through the deep, dark wood…

So begins the Gruffalo. A book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. We were given the story-book when Audrey was really small and (the now well thumbed) copy has become a favourite of ours ever since.

I think the premise of the story is based on a Chinese fable . The book was published in the late 90s and has since grown to be a bit of a children’s phenomenon with toys, DVDs and spin-off books ('The Gruffalo’s Child' amongst many others). Nevertheless, being English it all feels a bit less cynical than Dora (born from the empire of Murdoch).

Now the stage play of the Gruffalo was in town!

Audrey and I once again went along to a theatre performance, our second theatrical outing in a month (this time to the small but trendy ‘Street Theatre’ on the West of Canberra). The Gruffalo was nearly an hour long (amazingly adapted from a book which takes about 5 minutes to read!), but all the children were engrossed throughout. It was a nice play as it was really well sung, acted and there was plenty in it for the adults as well which would have passed over children’s heads.

There was no hard sell of merchandise which was nice and no interval either in which to push plastic toys via pester power. Audrey enjoyed herself and we’ve been enacting parts of it since we got home. A big thumbs up from us both for the Gruffalo.

…A mouse found a nut, and the nut was good.

Eli on the rocking-reindeer

Eli and Audrey share a rocking-reindeer which we bought a few months ago from Ikea. It's stood for weeks in Audrey's bedroom un-played with, but for reasons known only to people under 3 it's suddenly become toy no.1 overnight.

Because we only have one between them, Eli and Audrey have to learn to take turns, a concept which sometimes proves difficult for them to understand. Yesterday I would have paid over $500 to have had a second reindeer such was the comotion that having only one caused.

The video shows Eli enjoying himself on the toy (in his pyjamas) while Audrey caused devistation to another part of the house. Remarkably he's not come un-seated yet.

Out of the mouth of Audrey No.7

We’ve been trying to teach Audrey her p’s and q’s (why is it p’s and q’s and not p’s and t’s?) and she’s generally pretty good. On Sunday she was trying to scrounge a biscuit and so we asked her the eternal parental question;

“What do you say?”
and she very correctly asked, ‘May I have a biscuit, please?”
We handed her one and she took a big bite.
“Now what do you say?”
“Delicious!” came the answer.