Barwon Heads

After Forest we headed back to Barwon Heads to spend some time at my cousin Anna's beautiful place. It was a really cold and wet couple of days so to be able to spend a few days inside by a warm fire place was just heaven. Anna came down on the weekend and we were able to spend some quality time catching up while our kids ran amuck, was just great. Thanks so much for having us Anna!

Forrest

After we left Melbourne we spent four days in the Otway Ranges at a beautiful campsite at Stevenson's Falls. It was very wet and pretty cold, but very beautiful. We had another visit by a Superb Fairy Wren and his harem, we often have them at our campsite and love watching them.

Melbourne

We had a week in Melbourne with lots to do. Our busy week began staying with Jo & Simon for the night (thanks again guys) and then we camped down on foreshore at Rosebud. We were very excited to time our arrival with Mary and John (Tim's parents) who were in Melbourne for the day on a cruise. We met them at Port Melbourne and caught the tram into the city and had beautiful yum cha. After lunch we took them back to the port and said our farewells. It was so fantastic to see them both again, it has been too long! We then headed back into to town for a stroll around and to show the kids the street art in the alleyways.
We caught up with so many good friends as well as family during the week which included a great picnic, beautiful meals and lots of laughs. We even had visitors at our little home, which was fantastic! Thanks to everyone for their hospitality and for driving so far to see us.

Tazmazia!

Yes Tazmazia, its not a typo its a theme park full of you guessed it, mazes. Lots of fun running through very impressive mazes, pancakes at the end and more crazy mushrooms! We liked there attitude towards children and they seemed quite wise to some of our woes.

Cradle Mountain

Mary and Shane at Latrobe was close enough to Cradle Mountain so we could do a day trip up there rather than stay up where it was much cooler! We had a gorgeous day with perfect weather as we made our way around Dove Lake. It was the last thing left to do on our wish list of Tassie and and once again we were not disappointed. Oh and we thought the blue and purple mushrooms were amazing!

Mary & Shane

My cousin Mary made a very generous offer to park our camper on her property while we were at Penny's place, hopefully she didn't regret it! We spent a wonderful five days with her and Shane and their great boys Luke and Nick. We all loved feeding the animals and helping out where we could and I am not sure who wants a horse more, Tim or Lola!  Thankfully the Easter Bunny found us while we were there and we had a wonderful lunch with Mary, Shane, Luke and Nick as well as Anne, Ange and Sam on Good Friday. So great to spend some time with the relies in Tassie and hope to see them all again soon and thanks again to Mary, Shane, Nick and Luke for having us!
The dress Lola is wearing below is the dress Mary wore as flower girl at my Mum & Dad's wedding. I couldn't believe she had the dress still and Lola had to try it on. It didn't quite fit but Mary had another dress of hers that fit perfectly... combine that with Mary's horse ribbons and Lola became Tasmanian royalty.

We found a platypus at last!!!

The elusive platypus! We had spent hours sitting by rivers in Mt Field and various other locations. We were still, quiet and always looked around dusk but we had no luck. We had been told that Latrobe is the place to see them. We had hope, we were heading to Latrobe! We stopped in Deloraine to have a picnic lunch and a look around on the way. The kids were feeding their crusts to the ducks and swans and right there in the middle of a town, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the ducks & swans was a platypus! We watched him for ages, he wasn't bothered by the ducks and swans at all but they were certainly bothered by him.