Yesterday my eldest son and I attended Brisbane City Council’s “Kids Day Out” held at the Mount Coot-tha (pronounced Kuta) Botanical Gardens. I finally learned how to say it after we dropped into the Summit to quickly catch the view since we were in the vicinity.

As we turned off the highway we got an indication that the event was very popular, as a volley of cars were parking in a makeshift car park not far from the highway.

Despite I think it being the first time the event was held, the day was quite a success. It was also advertised for the attempted (and successfully completed!) World’s Largest Rain Dance.  It was good to see the 234 people walking around in a large circle trying – unsuccessfully – to bring on some rain under the guidance of local Aboriginal dancers.  The record is to be sent onto the Guinness Book people in the next week or so.  The Murri guy on the microphone hinted that someone else will likely try to take the record at the first opportunity, so we’ll just come back to beat them again.

Big hits on the day were the fruit bat exhibit (I have no idea why); the brass band (they even played Bob the Builder and a Wiggles megamix); a clown called Smarty Pants; and making his own clay creation.  Looking around at all clay sculptured bush animals and scenery – which was the day’s theme – I’m pretty confident my guy was the only one to make a police car, complete with gumnut wheels.

It was also good to see a few real native animals on display – although they seemed too docile.  I felt they were probably dreaming of escaping into the rainforest away from all the patting hands. The display had various lizards, green tree frogs, a tawny frog mouth who must have had a few coffees, and amazingly a fresh water crocodile.  I patted the croc, but the 4 year old wasn’t game – despite the security of a curl of sticky tape locking down his/her mouth of little sharp teeth.

I bumped into a colleague and his family there.  Interestingly they have quite an outgoing daughter around the same age as my son.  We thought they’d immediately hit it off.  But nope, they nodded through our introductions, then happily went their own ways.  This evening they met again at my touch footy game, where we got the reaction I had expected yesterday.  They played very nicely, and even had some beautiful hugs.  In fact, by the end of the night my son was saying how much he loved her. And the goodbyes were quite sad.

My son and I made our way down to Redcliffe yesterday to attend their first settlement festival and superboat grand prix.

The weater was perfect except for the wind playing havoc with the speed boats. There was a good festive atmosphere, and the visitor numbers seemed large.  They even had a shuttle bus service taking people back to other parking at the show grounds.  For once, I managed to fluke a great park close to the esplanade – where most of the action was.  To make the sheer odds even more bamboozling, I managed a perfect tight reverse park on the first attempt.

There was a good assortment of older style cars on display.  My boy has a fascination with shiny cars which was evident as he said “Wow, look at that one” to each and every car along the line.

Within a fraction of a second of us crossing the road to gander down at the waterfront area where the kids activites were centred, my son had sussed each and every ride and put in a class-action of requests.  I caved in, and he did way more than I had initially wanted.

He rode a merry-go round train (a big hit as he was in Thomas!), and played on a jumping castle.  Far above all this was the ‘actual train ride’ we went on. It was actually a converted ride-on  lawn mower with some flimsy carriages in tow. There are a few places around Brisbane where they have these going on occasion.  They’ve unfortunately become a mandatory thing – even if we caught a nice city train to get into the event.  Unfortunatley on the train ride I fumbled the big balloon that he scavenged when it was flying around without an owner.

My son's side-show alley prize

One of the real highlights of the day was his great success at side-show alley. Actually there were only two games available, so it was more of a side-show gutter than an alley. He chose the classic ping-pong balls down the clown’s mouth. When I asked the carnie what the cost was, he mentioned he had to put it up as he’d been losing all the medium-sized prizes.  Not that it worried us.  With five consecutive number threes my son won the major prize!! I was all set to take him with me to the Casino to keep the good luck rolling when I realised we would get one of the big, much sought after stuffed animals, pictured to the right. Next to him is a standard Whitepages phone book to indicate the size.  Despite it being a pretty dodgy Winnie the Pooh knock-off, it was one hell of a trophy.

It’s just not fair. I have been trying to win a major prize for probably more than 25 years, yet my son wins one before his 4th birthday. What’s even more impressive is it was probably only his second try, I only introduced him to the poor suffering clowns at the Ekka last month.

The umbrella piece of art

Further around the kids area there was an activity area where some were trying their hand at circus acrobatics and activities.  And next to this were a band of kids in technicoloured protective clothing painting their own little paper umbrellas. I subtely suggested this to my son.  This was partly to bring down my son’s levels of excitement, as well slow the furious spending I was doing trying to keep up.  It turned out to be a fantastic thing to do.  And I think the resulting masterpiece speaks for itself.

We fare-welled the festival, and drove along the esplanade to my brother’s place not far away.  On the way, the distinctive yellow of coast guard boats not far out to sea grabbed my attention.  We drove down to the water front to make out what they were there for. Although the figures were small we spotted two people getting dragged from the water into the two rescue boats.  If you squinted your eyes real hard you could also see there was a boat they were getting pulled from. Once the people were aboard, the coast guard started to head off in the very wavy seas.  To my surprise the rapidly sinking boat was getting towed, and it didn’t take long for it to resurface.  Just after the danger was averted, and the boat was impressively raised again, a Channel 9 news helicopter arrived on the scene. I could almost hear the camera man’s “D’oh” at only just missing the action.

It was certainly something you don’t see every day, which capped off a great day down at the peninsula.