Apple Pie.
We ate a piece if the Yatala apple pie Saturday night. It didn’t taste like mom’s (not even close), but it wasn’t terrible. The crust was strange – was more like a cookie. I was going to have another piece on Sunday, but the ants got to it first. Every so often if I leave any food on this one counter, we will have an infiltration of tiny ants. They don’t go beyond the counter (somehow they haven’t noticed the entire pantry full of food). So gross.

The Bearded Dragon.
We heard from a co-worker that a restaurant/tavern has a reptile show and cane road races every Sunday. We saw online that the reptile show was at 11:30, but weren’t sure about the cane toad races. We took our chances and “hopped” for the best (wah wah). We had to drive over Tambourine Mountain to get there, and I have been wanting to go to Mt Tambourine since the week we moved here, so I was all for the Australia Day adventure.
The drive over the mountain was beautiful. The road could use some repairs, and I was glad the kids fell asleep so I didn’t have to catch puke. I was amazed that there is a for real rainforest 30 minutes from our house. At the top of the mountain there is a little village with a bunch of shops and people milling about. Hold that thought…
About 10 minutes later we pulled into The Bearded Dragon. I am not exactly sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. In the spirit of Australia Day they had a “carnival”, which consisted of a sketch Ferris wheel, bumper cars, a haunted house, bungy jumpers, and an inflatable water slide (that was held up by ropes tied to the wheels of a car). It was kind of chilly, so I didn’t see a single kid go down the water slide. There was a large covered outdoor patio area. We grabbed a table and ordered an early lunch since we had about an hour to kill before the reptile show. The food was just meh, ok. The people watching was great – quite an interesting group of people that chose to spend their Australia Day at the Bearded Dragon. I guess we were one of them, so what does that say about us? Ty didn’t really want to do any of the rides (thank goodness). 11:30 came and went and a band was setting up where we thought the reptile guy was. I asked a bartender if there was a reptile show today and she said, “oh yeah, he’s out back. Running a little behind today.” Turns out “out back” also contained a small pasture with a couple alpacas (random). We found the reptile guy. He had a little pen set up with 5 or 6 covered tubs inside it. He pulled out some gross looking reptile, walked it around for everyone to touch (ewww!), and talked for 10 minutes about lizard facts – for each one… Ty was the kid that said, “dad, I’m done.” We made him tough it out for 3 reptiles, and then we decided to hit the road. Kind of a flop.
Oh, and the cane toad races…those didn’t start until 3:00. We for sure were not wasting the whole day at the tavern. Nuts. I thought it might be fun to start adding pictures of maps of the places we go so 50 years from now we can remember where we went.

Village.
We got in the car and drove back up the mountain to go to the little shops that we passed on the way over. I was imagining it to be kind of like Galena or a Breckenridge sort of shopping experience, full of interesting things made by local artists. Um. No. The “handmade crafts” were cross-stitched doilies. There was one store that sold Australiana, but it wasn’t great stuff. There were, however, about 15 different places to have tea… There were HEAPS of people, willing to spend cash on stuff, but there was absolutely not a single thing worth buying. More opportunity for all of you entrepreneurs…

Next time.
So the next time we go to the mountain, we will not be going to the Bearded Dragon or the shops. We will do more of the adventurous things that we didn’t feel like doing today with the kiddos. There is a skywalk that goes out over the rainforest canopy. There is a waterfall with a pond at the bottom that you can swim in (just like the movies). There is a distillery, some wineries, and breweries. We just picked the 2 worst things to do on Tambourine Mountain. We will give it one more try…

Swim.
Since the day’s outing was a flop, we decided to go for a swim when we got home. It was kind of chilly – pretty windy, but as long as we stayed in the water it was fine. Ty and I played a bit while Jay kept Lily happy and warm outside the pool (and cleaned up carrot puke – the new veggie of the day).

Holiday.
So all in all, Australia Day was kind of lame. I still couldn’t tell you what the holiday is celebrating – am guessing many Aussies couldn’t either. It sure didn’t feel like the 4th of July. I think it didn’t help that we were tired because Lily was up several times during the night before with a stuffed up nose.

Jay has to go to work tomorrow (unfortunately the corporate month end schedule doesn’t care about Australian holidays), so the kids and I are flying solo. Not sure what we are going to do yet. Hoping for a better day tomorrow.