It was supposed to be a father-daughter bonding afternoon exploring Tidbinbilla's wetlands. Instead, it ended up with 83 slippery slides, 47 flying fox rides and countless scrambles to the top of the climbing tower. In fact, as I lure my five-year-old daughter, Sarah, into the yowie mobile with a Freddo Frog, we are the last car to leave the Tidbinbilla Adventure Playground.
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Usually we can't stay this late. We live northside and the near hour-long drive dodging kangaroos is best avoided, but tonight is different. We're staying here. Well, not at the popular playground (although I did consider curling up for a nap in those mini cubbies near the top entrance when Sarah was on her 13th session on the swings), but the next best spot - right next door at Birrigai.
If you went to school in Canberra, you might remember Birrigai as ''that school camp place down south''. Countless newcomers to Canberra no doubt speed past the dirt driveway adorned with a white sign pointing to Birrigai, oblivious to what treasures lie beyond. Which is a pity. It's a great resource for our community right on the doorstep of Tidbinbilla and Namadgi National Park. And with school camps mainly run during the week, it's also an accommodation facility with dozens of empty beds on weekends.
In an attempt to tap into the weekend recreation market, Birrigai has thrown its doors open to the public on selected weekends, and tonight we're giving it a test run.
I think the uptake has been a bit slow - we're the only ones booked in tonight. We'll have the whole 170-hectare camp to ourselves - oh and the proliferation of emus and kangaroos.
With the onset of dusk, and Sarah still claiming she could have squeezed in ''at least one more ride on the flying fox'', we step into the warmth of our cabin. There's a double and a single bed in our room. Sarah somehow cuts a deal with me - I get the double bed on the proviso that she gets unfettered rights to our complete stash of Freddo Frogs.
I'd enticed Sarah to this overnight adventure with the promise of finding a cave (and, of course, also the prospect of being the first kid at the Tidbinbilla playground the next day).
Well, OK, there are no caves here in the true sense of the word like Yarrangobilly or Jenolan caves, but there are a series of crawl-thrus in the surrounding hills.
It's now completely dark, so I fumble for my torch. I flick the on switch. Nothing. I try again.
Still nothing. Great, the batteries are dead. Luckily, Sarah listened to her daddy and put new batteries in her torch before we left home. And so under the intensity of a toy torch, off we traipse into the night.
We scramble up the side of the partly-forested hill on the border of Tidbinbilla and Birrigai - I think it's called Jabanungga. The mud map supplied by Birrigai refers to a patch of scrub to our south as Bunyip Castle. I don't fancy facing venturing into the lair of a nocturnal monster, even if it is just a myth, without a torch so we skirt well clear of that area and towards the crawl-thrus.
We soon pass by the out-of-bounds Birrigai Rock shelter, where archaeological evidence indicates Aboriginal people camped 21,000 years ago, making it one of the most significant Aboriginal sites in south-eastern Australia.
It's a bit uneasy walking past such a spiritually significant spot, under the cloak of darkness.
I recall a custom that an Aboriginal person once told me to make a lot of noise when you approach such an area to let ''them'' know you are coming.
Awkwardly, I yell out ''hello, it's Tim and Sarah.'' There's no response but it makes me feel better. Sarah just wants to go into the nearby crawl-thru, which we soon reach. Like a ferret, she crouches and scurries repeatedly (I didn't count this time) along the 20-metre tunnel-come-cave.
It's getting late, and with a gobful of dust (as the sole torch bearer, Sarah made me crawl behind her each time), it's time to return to our cabin.
Lying in bed, I try to explain to Sarah how different it would have been for the Aboriginal people who slept in the rock shelter, but, exhausted, she's already fast asleep. I take the opportunity to feast on a couple of Freddos before also nodding off.
We wake at dawn to the sounds of kangaroos munching on grass right outside our window.
Although there's a late autumn chill in the air, it's toasty in our room and we munch on our cornflakes while watching the fog clear from atop the nearby Gibraltar Peak, which is almost perfectly framed by our cabin window.
The rooms are comfortable enough. Certainly sufficiently spacious and spotlessly clean.
However, the shower is fitted with the stingiest of water savers I've ever encountered. No doubt it's to curb careless water usage by the hundreds of children on school camp every week. The dribble of water is so feeble (it's also not all that hot, no doubt to prevent burns from over-zealous tap-turning teenagers) that we abandon our showers. Who needs a shower, anyway; we'll be dirty again before you know it.
Birrigai is a public school, so even if you stay on weekends there are program areas that are off limits to casual guests. But don't worry, there's more than enough to keep you amused.
Sarah makes a beeline for the outdoor musical instruments, which comprise a series of pipes of various lengths that you can thump with over-sized ping-pong bats to make music. Sarah belts out a tune that more resembles her howl of anguish when she discovered a pile of empty Freddo Frog wrappers under my pillow this morning than anything resembling melodious.
About 50 kangaroos enjoying a mid-morning snooze on the surrounding slopes don't seem at all fussed. With hundreds of kids running amok here every week, they've heard it all before.
It's finally time to leave. Oh, and what about the Tidbinbilla playground? It's forgotten (for now). Making your own fun is sometimes so much better.
Birrigai @ Tidbinbilla: Birrigai is open for public bookings on weekends and school holidays. Cost a night: $41.80 an adult and $35.50 a child under 12. Bring your own linen, pillows and towels. Blankets provided. For bookings, phone 6205 6748 or fill out the online form: tidbinbilla.com.au/birrigai/enquiryform. Birrigai is located an easy 40-minute drive to the south of the city centre.
Alternatively, the nearby Cafe Tidbinbilla (9am-4pm, Wednesday-Sunday, with great coffee to boot) is only a five-minute drive or, for the more adventurous, a 40-minute walk via the Birrigai Rock shelter. For groups of 20 or more, Birrigai can provide catering.
Michael just beat Helen Middelmann of Curtin and Rosemary Parker to the prize, who both recognised my ''Italian'' clue, which referred to the fact that in 1943 interned Italian Nationals were employed by the Forestry and Timber Bureau to plant pine trees to assist with erosion control. ''Blue Range Hut was the galley of the camp,'' says Parker, who, as a member of a local bushwalking group, has enjoyed ''lunch or afternoon tea at this hut on numerous occasions''.
Last week, while undertaking maintenance work on a dead tree that was posing a potential safety risk for campers at the popular campground, staff from ACT Parks and Conservation Service found this eastern pygmy possum (see below). It was only the seventh documented report of the cute critter in the ACT.
''Finding this specimen suggests that population numbers may remain viable within the ACT and it is a positive indication that many areas of the ACT are successfully recovering following the fires of 2003,'' manager of Operations, National Parks and Catchments, Brett McNamara, says. After checking on its health and general wellbeing, Parks staff were able to relocate the tiny marsupial to a nearby habitat tree.
Blue Range Hut and campground are located on Blue Range Road, 2.6 kilometres (on dirt) from the turn-off on Brindabella Road, Uriarra.
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email after 10am Saturday with the correct answer wins a double pass to Dendy cinemas.
Wow! What a crowd at the Collector Village Pumpkin Festival last Sunday. With more than 80 entries, the scarecrow competition was the festival's most keenly contested in 10 years. Charged with judging duties, after much deliberation, I awarded the top gong to the Dowling family of Collector, who carefully crafted this somewhat ''cheeky'' hay man. ''We'd been planning him for a while,'' says Julianne, who, along with her husband Gary and two sons, Edward and Lachlan, ''wanted to make something a bit different and spent hours putting him together''.
Email: timtheyowieman@bigpond.com or Twitter: @TimYowie or write to me c/o The Canberra Times 9 Pirie St, Fyshwick.