Day 29 – Adelaide Hills

It was an adventure up into the northern part of the Adelaide Hills today.

On the way, we wanted to swing by another big thing for the kids to tick off: the Big Scotsman! It’s not really an official big thing – it’s just attached to the side of a motel. But it was still fun to find and get a photo with from the other side of the road.

We headed up toward Birdwood – the first stop of the day was the National Motor Museum. The car nerd in me was again looking forward to this (knowing they had a Holden exhibition here as well) – but it has a huge range of other motoring exhibitions as well. Daniel and I did spend the vast majority of the time in the Holden Heroes exhibition – there were a great collection of the milestone cars (eg: one-millionth car, six-millionth car, etc), as well as the first and last Holden ever made, and then also a really wide variety of all the concept cars they produced over the years. Then, as a family, we had fun wandering through a few of the other exhibitions too – including a fun section with car racing games through the years (a bonus of travelling during school term is that no one else was playing them!).

By the time we ventured out of the museum, the temperature had dropped hugely up around Birdwood – it was just 9º and just starting to drizzle slightly! We found a little picnic shelter near a park to have our lunch, and the kids didn’t really care – they were still running around on the play equipment and loving it.

Our next stop was the Toy Factory and Big Rocking Horse. Two big things ticked off in one day! We got to climb the Big Rocking Horse – something that Debbie, Daniel and I weren’t able to do when we were here last with him – he was just 9 months old then, so climbing ladders with a baby isn’t overly safe. This time though, everyone climbed to the top!

We wandered through the shop of the Toy Factory for a little while, admiring all the beautifully crafted wooden toys. But then the other attraction at the Toy Factory is their Animal Park – a little unexpected, but a fun experience. They have quite a few different animals throughout the park that have been rescue animals at one time or another. The kids had a great time wandering through the park and giving them some food. The animals clearly know when humans are arriving with food – a few ducks and a llama loved following us around for quite a while!

These last few days as we’ve visited places have been really quiet. Now that we’re out of school holidays of course, we’ve almost got all these tourist attractions to ourselves! I don’t know that every hugely crossed our minds when we were booking and planning things, but it’s been nice to experience.

Tomorrow, back into a bit more of the Adelaide Hills area!