local tourist

A wonderful thing has happened to our family recently. Andy has come to the end of filming and editing his tv series Spearing the Menu.  You might have seen it on Channel 31 Melbourne and Adelaide, or TVS in Sydney or QCTV in Brisbane. It's pretty cool.  But as the editor of the show, it is pretty time consuming and does take up a good deal of his weekend time.  But now he's finished editing we have him to ourselves again. Hooray!! And I must say it's been bloody fantastic. We've been dedicating a day every weekend to get out and do something as a family. And it has been loads of fun.

The weekend before last our outing was the Bollard Walk in Geelong.  Lily has had a fascination with bollards since she was little and loves pointing them out when we drive by them or giving them a good cuddle if we see one close up. 

If you're not familiar with the bollards in Geelong. There are many many bollards scattered along the foreshore at Corio Bay in Geelong. They are the work of the very talented Jan Mitchell and depict many aspects and characters that capture the history of both Geelong and Australia. 

Rugged up in our winter gear, coats and beanies, and hopeful that the weather forecast for scattered showers would hold out for us, we set off to cover half of the bollard walk with Lily on her bike.  

Integral to the history of Geelong is of course the story of the introduction of the rabbit to Australia. Some silly pastoralist many many moons ago thought it would be a jolly good idea to bring some rabbits over here, and the rest, well you know the story.  On many of the bollards you can find a little rabbit hiding.  This was such a great game of exploration for Lily, she loved riding off to the next bollard to find the rabbit.

Toby observed the day from my back and relaxed right out and slept through most of it. Argghh, the life huh!

I loved seeing the excitement in Lily as she rode from bollard to bollard calling out to us, "Hurry up!" "Next one Mummy and Daddy!"  

This lady here was definitely her favourite.
A few familiar faces to be found here ;)
It was a terrific outing. The whole walk is supposed to take about an hour, we did half of it and walked from the Rippleside Park to the Carousel (what an awesome half way point) and it took us over two hoursto get there!!  That did include a stop off at the play ground on the way though and the way back was much quicker. We only had to skip to shelter once too, which was pretty awesome!