museum Archives | Let's go Mum

Road trip! Day 2 – Glenrowan & Great Ocean Road…

LetsGoMum — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 21:33:57 +0000

Phew – what a day! Lots of fun for everyone, lots of driving for me – ah, the joys of being a single parent!

We headed off from Wangaratta and straight to McDonalds drive-through to grab some drinks to chase down our hotel brekkie (I think I’m already putting weight on from all the hot breakfasts!), then pulled into a park with a playground to sup on coffee whilst the kids ran off their orange juice.

We’re ready to hit the road again – my Mum and I (with the kids already buckled in!)

Victoria has awesome parks and rest stops – they do a great job at looking after their travellers. There always seems to be lots of picnic stops, toilet stops and great playgrounds. I like to think that the kids are doing their own reviews – road-testing every possible playground they can talk me into stopping at! The result is that although I formulate a lose schedule for our days travel, we often run terribly late or short – but then, that’s half the fun of travel! As I broken-record-ly repeat to the kids, half the fun is getting there – and it really is. It’s those unexpected things you come across in your journeys that you end up remembering the most!

Kids will be kids – always factor in some kid playtime so that everyone enjoys themselves!

Take our first park stop. The usual stuff – pre-schoolers playing (the school kids in Victoria are back at school now of course), mums sipping coffee, the couple walking the ferrets….wait, what? Turns out we had run into some ferret ambassadors, lovely people with totally gorgeous ferrets! I had always thought of them as bitey little critters, but as it turns out they are the most gorgeous, lovable things. We loved petting and cuddling them, and not a bite in sight!

Way too cute for their own good – a random ferret encounter in a Wangaratta park!

Glenrowan – Ned Kelly’s Last Stand – the Animated Theatre Show

Next, onward to our morning activity – Glenrowan. Just a ten minute drive away from Wangaratta, and one of the highlights of our trip, no doubt. Glenrowan is of course all about Ned Kelly’s last stand. Love him or hate him, Ned Kelly is one of Australia’s most famous bushrangers – but I’m not going to give you a history lesson about what you already know – I want to tell you about the interactive Ned Kelly Museum in Glenrowan – because it’s awesome!

Ned Kelly’s Last Stand – the Animated Theatre show

Before I get started, here’s a family warning for you – it’s probably going to scare the pants off of your kids under 10. Brooke my 9yo enjoyed it mostly, but I assess that she spent approximately 50% of the time a bit scared, judging by her trying-to-look-cool face! Samantha, my 7yo spent approximately 50% of the time hiding her head on my lap! It is scary – the dark atmosphere, light/sound effects and robotic characters – and elements of surprise! So you might want to pre-warn the kids before going in (okay, I did do this – it didn’t really work so well, but it’s worth a shot!).

Big sisters have their uses – Samantha takes cover behind Brooke during the show

We were very lucky to have the whole animated museum show to ourselves. It follows Ned Kelly’s last stand at the Glenrowan Pub, with all of its exciting happenings and atmosphere. You move from room to room filled with animated dummies, and just too much going on to see it all. Room by room and outside too, you follow the Kelly Gang to the shoot-out, and eventually their ultimate demise – all the way to the last surviving member’s end at Melbourne Jail – Ned himself.

There’s so much going on, you won’t know which way to look in the Ned Kelly show!

It’s all jolly good fun for us old folk (yep, the parents), but unless you have teenagers, you may want to assess if your young child is up for it – and definitely avoid this show if you have sensitive toddlers. That is, unless you’re okay with the future psychiatrist bills (just kidding)! All that said, Samantha exclaimed as we emerged from the show that she “really, really wanted to come back again soon!” – someone explain to me again how 7yos think? Because I really have no idea sometimes…

Here’s a short clip of the Ned Kelly show (non-scary!):

Still a bit shell-shocked from the show, we all stumbled next door for a totally in-theme, sumptuous Ned Kelly home-made damper lunch at Dad & Dave’s Billy Tea Café. Here we sat on the cool wooden veranda and stuffed ourselves silly before hitting the souvenir shops (Don’t miss getting the kids their own soft Ned Kelly mask – for just $10 they can torment you in the car for hours with hold-ups for lollies!)

This was just as yummy as it looks – home-made damper for lunch – mmmm!

There is so much to see and do in Kelly country, but with kids this age, clearly they had had reached their bushranger saturation point. We headed back to the freeway with a Youtube Ned Kelly story playing on the stereo for atmosphere – I hoped that some of the historic tale would subconsciously rub off on them. It did a bit, however as you can probably guess, the kids were far more interested in play acting Ned’s notorious role rather than the poor old police officers!

Apart from a quick toilet-stop, and to look for koala’s in the trees (but the signs said there are Koalas Mummy!) and have a few practise throws of Samantha’s new boomerang (we’re appalling at it – clearly it’s broken!), we stayed the course and drove all the way down the freeway almost to Melbourne. We then hit the Melbourne traffic as we veered off onto the Western Ring Road to Geelong. We grabbed some take-away for dinner (another playground stop!), and then headed straight down to the start of the Great Ocean Road at Torquay. This leg took us around 4 hours including breaks.

By this time it was early evening. I didn’t want to be driving too late, so we began the look-out for hotel vacancy signs as we wound our way along the coast. I was a little worried, as it was Friday night, and no doubt Melbournians love their weekends away down here – what if there were no vacancies?

Lightkeepers Motor Inn, Aireys Inlet, Victoria

Luckily there wasn’t an issue as we saw plenty of vacancies. We stopped at the Lightkeepers Motor Inn at Aireys Inlet – $175 for the night and close by to the rather striking lighthouse there. I had hoped that the Motel might have had lighthouse views, however unfortunately not, however there was a nice little pool which the kids promptly threw themselves into, before a hot shower and hitting the school books – and then the sack!

Lightkeepers Motor Inn at Aireys Inlet on the Great Ocean Road

The Lightkeepers Motor Inn is situated up on the hill before you descend to Airey’s Inlet on the Great Ocean Road, and it’s main highlights were its large bathrooms, awesome cooked breakfast – and of course, its resident deaf Dalmatian, who the information folder warns you about not running over, as she can’t hear you!

Today’s route…

You can read our Road Trip! daily blogs here…

We’ll be moving on again tomorrow, this time down the road towards the lovely town of Lorne, Victoria – we’ll catch up with you then!

Have you travelled (or want to) travel to Glenrowan, or along the Great Ocean Road with your little bushrangers? Comment here!

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Australian War Memorial Canberra – is it good for kids?

LetsGoMum — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 08:22:45 +0000

Today we spend the day at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra…

The Australian War Memorial is a majestic museum – a place to remember Australia’s lost soldiers and commemorate their sacrifices in war. Here also is a multitude of rare war artefacts, displays and art works housed in a huge complex of galleries. But is this the kind of museum you’d take children to? Well, as it turns out, it’s fabulous for kids.

I did have a few initial doubts about taking the kids to the War Memorial. I hadn’t visited this museum for many years, and couldn’t remember it as being particularly suitable for children. Happily I was to find out that over the years it has developed some excellent children’s educational and interactive areas. But even without the kid-friendly areas, the War Memorial has a lot to offer children and families. The gravity of the history and stories it has to tell is invaluable to every Australian, young and old – and it can also be a lot of fun!

There is a lot to see inside the Australian War Memorial!

Upon arriving we found ourselves in the enormous open courtyard of the Roll of Honour, where the tens of thousands of lost soldier’s names are inscribed on the walls covered in bright red Remembrance Poppies – it’s a sobering sight. It had the children thinking and asking all sorts of questions – and examining the names on the walls. Here too is the eternal flame, and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier that represents so many lost soldiers.

We circled back around and entered the inside of the museum, stopping by the information desk to pick up a free map – which it turned out we barely needed, thanks to the extremely helpful guides dotted around the museum.

We made our way through numerous galleries and exhibitions of the different World Wars taking in life-like war scenes, articles, photos, weapons and so much more. Now and then I wistfully gazed at some display or other that I would have liked to have examined more closely as we passed by at our eager-child’s-pace – oh well, perhaps when they were a bit older!

Authentic boats, planes, motorcycles, jeeps are all on display

The children found the many dioramas and small models of battle scenes fascinating rather than frightening. Stuffed, life sized war horses stared glassily out of their cases. Old uniforms, bullet-marked hats, a Gallipoli landing boat complete with artillery holes – the sheer volume of artefacts was astounding.

Half way around we emerged into the Aircraft Hall and then over the bridge to Anzac Hall, a huge pavilion containing several full-sized aeroplanes, a Sydney-Harbour-invading Japanese midget submarine and scattered war guns, all with accompanying eerie light and sound shows – the affect was remarkable, and the kids loved it as they ran about exploring and playing imaginary games.

Here’s a quick 30 second snatch of what the Anzac Hall aeroplane show is like…

Keeping up with two excited kids often going in opposite directions is hard work, so at this point we stopped at The Landing Place Café and enjoyed some lunch overlooking Anzac Hall It gave us time to stare at and puzzle over just how they got the blue lighting to look like shimmering water! Then we set out on a mission to find The Discovery Zone.

The Discovery Zone interactive children’s area

A child-focussed area, The Discovery Zone is open mostly to school children during the week days, but is open to the public all day on the weekends and holidays. For families, it’s worth visiting the War Memorial just for this interactive area alone, as this is where the kids probably enjoy and learn the most at the War Memorial.

Children can take the controls of an Iroquois helicopter – a film plays in front!

A kids hands-on area, at the Discovery Zone children can dress up in different war outfits, sit in an Iroquois helicopter “in flight”, play in a fitted-out submarine complete with periscope, radar and sleeping quarters and try out life in a trenches replica (even find out what “Trench Foot” – a rotted foot disease looks like on their own leg thanks to some tricky lights – ugh!).

Ewww! Brooke wasn’t keen when trick lights turned her foot into a mass of “Trench Foot” sores!

Next stop in The Discovery Zone is learning all about how to be a Peace-Keeper, including bridge engineering, land mine removal and water purifying – all in model form, of course! Lastly you enter a World War 2 backyard for some real 2nd World War-time atmosphere. The Discovery Zone is pure child-gold, and highly recommended for families.

Kid’s can play in a replica submarine interior, complete with radar, periscope and bunk-beds!

I finally managed to extract the girls from the Discovery Zone to go and see the Vietnam exhibitions. This featured a large area housing army tanks, jeeps and aeroplanes. From here we were directed to seek out the bridge of the Gulf War ship, the HMAS Brisbane – which was another exciting discovery for the kids – they raced up a flight of stairs to find a complete ships bridge just waiting to be explored!

Check out the actual control bridge of the HMAS Brisbane!

Our last areas to visit were the corridors of the Boer War, then back down to the World War 2 galleries. It was hard to take it all in, but somehow we covered an awful lot, and in the end we had spent a quite a few hours really enjoying this museum with two kids under ten years old.

If you’re visiting Canberra with the kids, the Australian War Memorial is a great way to bring Australian history to life on a fascinating family day out!

The Australian War Memorial – useful info:
The Canberra War Memorial is located at the top of Anzac Parade in Campbell ACT. It’s just a short bus ride or drive from either the city centre (Civic) or airport, and around a 3 and a half hour drive from Sydney. The War Memorial is well sign-posted and easy to find, with free car parking. Entry is free (gold coin donation).

You’ll find the Australian War Memorial website here for further information

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