It was so much fun to look for such kind of almost unnoticeable stuff, as you know, they are out there everywhere, but they hardly exist because you never particularly look for them, see them, touch them or pick them up.

Despite the very unpleasant weather, being so windy and freezing cold and barely anybody out there (today is ANZAC public holiday), we enjoyed ourselves so much to be able to close to all of these nature treasures, different sorts of pine cones, brown, yellow and green, long or short, big or small, dry or still wet, beautiful falling tree branches, pretty pine needle leaves, late autumn colours……

It only took me a couple of demonstration for V to get a hang of what we were doing. Then she was off on her feet, went picking until she filled the bag with pine cones and branches to the point that she could not carry the weight any more.

She absolutely loved it. My husband and I love it too, thinking to make it one of our weekend activities.

All the pine cones and branches will go into the metal tub near the slow combustion in our home. We are preparing for a cold winter by filling up the tub with fire wood, pine cones, old newspaper and small tree branches…..

The photo was taken while we were walking along the lake to help to digest food after our dinner.

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Even though it is not an easy job to take a two years old for hiking, we were so inspired by the photos displayed in the Visitor Centre and the beautiful surrounding environment that the mountains and beautiful wild trees offer, that we decided to do a bit bush walking.

We managed to finish an hour’s bush walking along the woodland track…. short and sweet. The whole walking was very slow paced and we stopped occasionally to catch the breath, have some snacks and shoot some photos. However, we really had a good time and that was what the whole point was about, to get out to the mother nature, to see, to breath the fresh air, and to feel.

I suppose that it was a bit stupid that we carried so much stuff, including a tripod, a cooler bag, my normal big tote bag, David’s camera gear bag and of course Vivian, who walked about half way and always tried to run off the track to go into the grassy area touching this and that, as she has no idea about potential hazard and sees no difference from this to our backyard, which was not helpful anyway.

Then we went to Lanyon Homestead at noon time, Vivian had a ball over there. She ran on the steep lawn in the garden up and down, tried to invade into private farming property over the other side of the fence, to drive behind the wheel of an old tractor….she screamed, jumped, laughed (except ate) until the sky got black and the rain fell. We took the shelter in the marquee until we finished the lunch over there.

Vivian fell asleep on the car on the way back. It didn’t take long for her to do so, only about 5 minutes’ rolling her eyes and losing her body control before she completely dozed off to her dreamland. On the other side of the road near a pond, a herd of black cows stared at us with their interesting white faces, which looked incredibly real that we had to stop to take more photos for them.

We were glad that we did this today as it was so lovely. Already started to talk about coming back with ourselves more prepared.

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The whole event wasn’t that interesting at all. However, the house and the garden were very impressive. I wouldn’t mind living there The house actually is overlooking the lake and right on the opposite of Black Mountain Telstra Tower. Standing on the lake bank, the view was grand and it reminded me one of my favourite paintings “Point of Advantage” by  Lawrence Alma-Tadema. I wondered if those ladies in the painting actually posed here.

The band was not super good. The circus was basic but very entertaining to kids. Vivian changed her positions a few times in the crowd, kneeling on my lap, standing on my knees, grabbing my shoulders…. My whole body was used by her to get a better view of the stage.

We had brought plenty food for picnic. Sat ourselves at a nice spot facing the band, we noticed that the cafe van next to us had a long queue of people waiting to be served. We thought we could have share our food with them or simply sold our food:-)

Eventually we gave up the idea of going into the house as it seemed impossible to wait in the long queue with two active and exhausted toddlers. Frankly, I was not interested in looking inside at all. Wouldn’t be another counterpart of Zhong Nan Hai? but just in Western style?

 Vivian sitting in her stroller listening to music

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