Sydney had one of those stretches this winter where it felt like it hadn’t stopped raining in a week, and we’d already been to every indoor play centre within driving distance. A friend mentioned a climbing place tucked away in Castle Hill, and honestly, we probably wouldn’t have found it ourselves. It’s in an industrial […]
Diggerland Braeside Review
My son’s face the second we walked in was worth the drive on its own. Eyes wide, that high-pitched noise kids make when they can’t get a sentence out fast enough. He went from one machine to the next, sweaty, wouldn’t leave. There’s a huge sand pit with a spinning slide built into it, a […]
The Melbourne Museum Where Kids Get to Drive the Tram
There’s a particular kind of joy that comes from watching your child do something they’re normally told not to. Climb into the driver’s seat of a vehicle. Ring a bell as many times as they like. Turn a big steering wheel that actually does something. At the Melbourne Tram Museum in Hawthorn, that’s more or […]
Gumnuts Playland Knox Review
We’d been putting off a weekend trip to Westfield Knox for weeks, mostly because every indoor play centre we already knew felt a bit tired. Then a friend mentioned a new one had opened on Level 2, near Timezone, with a whole nature theme and Aussie animal mascots. That was enough to get us in […]
Dinosaur World Somerville Review
If you’ve got a dinosaur-obsessed kid at home, you’ve probably already had “Dinosaur World” typed into your search bar at some point. It sits just off the Peninsula Link on the way down to the Mornington Peninsula, tucked in behind a Christmas tree farm in Somerville, and it comes up constantly in Melbourne south east […]
The Little Chooks Farm, Spencer — An Alpaca Farm Stay a Little Over an Hour From Sydney
We’d got to that point where a “weekend away” meant driving forty minutes to a shopping centre with a slightly nicer food court. Nobody was relaxed, everybody had a phone out, and by Sunday afternoon we were just as frazzled as we’d been on Friday. So when a friend sent me a video of alpacas […]
Castledare Miniature Railway – Ride the Little Trains in Wilson
We found this one the way most good Perth day trips get found, someone mentioned it in passing and it took a Google search to work out where it actually was. Castledare Miniature Railway isn’t somewhere you stumble across. It only runs a handful of days a month, it’s tucked along the Canning River in […]
Yesign Chocolate Gallery Docklands – What the Chocolate Painting Workshop Is Actually Like
We were about three days into the school holidays and I’d already run out of ideas that didn’t involve a screen, so when a friend sent me a video of someone painting with actual chocolate, I sat up. Not chocolate-flavoured paint. Chocolate. As in, melted, tempered, real chocolate standing in for oils and watercolours. The […]
Power Play Sydney Reviews: Prices, Hours & Is It Worth It?
We had heard a few other Sydney parents talking about Power Play before we booked, so we went in with fairly high expectations. It still managed to surprise us. Nine rooms, two kids, one very sweaty hour later, we walked out already talking about when we’d go back. If you’re after something for the school […]
Minoland Oakleigh Review: Is Melbourne’s Biggest New Indoor Playground Worth the Hype?
By day three of the school holidays I was out of ideas. It was grey outside, the kids had reached that particular pitch of restlessness that only happens indoors, and my group chat had spent the whole week going on about a huge new indoor playground that had just opened in Oakleigh. Someone described it […]