Our adventure!
Sometimes I’m reminded of the saying that there is very little difference between bravery and stupidity. I had one of those moments when I decided to take Willow on a train trip. She has been going home from Uni with A on the bus which is very exciting, so I figured that a train would be as much, if not more fun.
We don’t have any trains on this side of town, so we had to take the O-Bahn into the city, then a train out again. I decided to take the pram instead of wearing Dexter in a sling because my back is, quite frankly, rooted. I had planned to take a train to Semaphore, but upon finding that no trains run to Semaphore, I decided that we’d go to Grange instead. I hadn’t been on a train since I was in NYC in 2003, and I hadn’t been on a train in Australia for about 10 years.
On the bus in, it was rather crowded, so an African woman held Willow on her lap so that I could sit down. It was interesting to evaluate my ability to trust members of the general public with my child. She really seemed to like Willow and asked her all the usual questions, what her name was, how old she was… I think it is good for Willow to have a broad experience of people growing up.
Willow was very excited to go on the O-Bahn but even more excited to go on a train. She quite liked being able to move around. We spoke to another mum and her 2 year old daughter who had recently had heart surgery. When we got off the train I was a bit disoriented but we soon found the Grange Jetty Cafe and shared some fish and chips.
Then we walked out on the Grange Jetty where Willow was fascinated with the fishermen. One in particular was catching Tommy Ruff after Tommy Ruff. He let her hold one but it slipped out of her hands and I caught it and put it back in his bucket.
Dexter was not a big fan of the jetty, it was bright but over cast, thankfully it wasn’t windy.
I have to admit that I have been dreading the talk about death with Willow and I expected that seeing the little fish get caught and put in buckets might bring it on. I even explained about the bait and hook that the fisher men used, but she wasn’t overly curious.
I forgot the memory card for my camera, so these phone photos are the best I can do. Very natural shots, don’t you think?
We walked back to the train station, Dexter had fallen asleep by this time and only woke up when a loud woman started yelling at her husband on her mobile phone.
Being back on the train again was slightly less exciting and Dexter decided he needed another feed, so Willow moved around a bit more than I was happy with.
Once we got back to the city, we walked along North Terrace, which is where the photo of Willow and the Matthew Flinders Statue was taken. Since we were walking past the Museum, we stopped in for a look, partly to use the toilets and feed Dexter again. A security guard asked if I knew there was a baby care room upstairs when I was feeding him in front of the taxidermied animals from around the world, I said that I was comfortable where I was.
One of the animals on display was a big lion whose tail had been motorised to swish at intervals. I had forgotten that Willow has an invisible lion at home who scares her and makes her run in the house, so in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have made such a fuss of him.
Next we stopped at the Art Gallery. I really was just wheeling the pram around trying to get Dexter to sleep and I figured I’d try to do it in a nice environment!
It didn’t work so I was about to leave, but the kind security guard suggested that I might like to thate the children to the exhibition in the basement called Handle with Care. More Images I really liked it and so did Willow. One of the pieces looked like the contents of someone’s spare room, all neatly arranged in the dimensions of a room, but you could walk in it and look in/out through polypipe tubes. I have never seen a piece of art with a scent listed as a medium. The description doesn’t do it justice, so do check out the images. It is the first one listed.
Willow had gotten ahead of me and she was walking in amongst some lucite rods suspended from the ceiling and I saw a security guard try to get her attention and pointed at the sign on the floor that said ‘do not enter’ I laughed and told him that she can’t read yet. He laughed too.
We finally got on the bus to go home again, but it was quite crowded.
A couple of people were kind enough to help me get the pram on the bus. Willow started to get a bit ratty, so she got in Dexter’s seat and I held Dexter, who didn’t mind in the slightest. Then she wanted to get out, so I asked her to show me how clever she was at doing the pram straps up – then she was stuck! She soon fell asleep and Dexter spent the rest of the trip amusing the woman sitting next to us.
