Did I mention the bolognese from Tuesday night? How long do you have to boil mince to get all the little bits of meat so bloody small. A day? Two? Flavorless, devoid of identifiable tomato and slapped on top of over cooked penne - the kids loved it. Philistines.
Another 0530 wake up call from the Bush Capital Lodge Kitchen Percussion Band ably accompanied by 40 odd kids from another school who were up early to get to the snow for the day. Nice for them given they were heading into day 3 of a blizzard that had already dumped 1.5 metres of snow on their destination.
ATTRACTION No.8 - CSIRO.
Giant model bugs, turtles, hands on experiments and a 3D space film. What's not to like if you're a primary school kid. No fatalities despite attempts by some of our more......um, investigative kids to fashion a super virus from two connected coke bottles full of spiraling water, pea DNA and a cog and wheel construction kit. Stick some of these kids in a lab coat and they may as well be stroking a hairless cat while seated in a big revolving chair and laughing maniacally.
The kids entirely emptied the gift shop of slime related products (SRP's), necessitating a quick ban on the opening of said items in the bus that worked for at least 32 minutes. The Thomas family tally was only 2 SRP's so we got off lightly I suspect.
ATTRACTION No.9 - Questacon (Hail the Mother Of All Gift Shops).
To give it it's due, Questacon seems to send human beings under the age of 12 (which I assume to be it's target audience) into a near frothing frenzy of enthusiasm. All that pressing, pulling, prodding and sliding. For myself I'm thinking - meh.
I was assigned the same group of girls to herd up and then down the spiraling series of rooms until they reached the 7 metre slippery dip ride thingy at the bottom. This required them to put on a pair of overalls and then go from sitting on a step to hanging by a bar over what, from the bottom at least, seemed like a completely doable vertical drop to stainless steel slippery dip. As someone who once spent 30 minutes at Cubs holding onto a steel bar up a tree and most determinedly not sliding down the flying fox the bar was attached to I say - 'Well done to them that did it' (and to those who didn't - welcome to the Club).
The gift shop at Questacon was both massive and so packed with various school groups that I could have gone to sleep in there and totally not fallen over I swear. Very similar to the CSIRO gift shop in many respects (slime was again available for example) just 3 to 5 dollars more expensive.
Once extracted from Questacon's gaping maw, we lunched in the park opposite before climbing onto the bus for the long trip home. A lot less in the way of nausea and toilet stench which was nice. Did have to sit through the movie Frozen however. Vocal opposition from all the boys at this selection didn't stop them all watching the whole thing in attentive silence I noted (and singing along quietly - Let it go. Let it go. Let it go, let it goooooooo....)
Toilet breaks x3, pizza at West Pennant Hills and we pulled into the School car park at around 7.30pm without the loss of a single child. A totally awesome performance by us. Awesome (though in retrospect we might have been more assertive in the 'get into those bloody showers children before your underwear dissolves' area).
I give this excursion 4.5 stars out of 5.
Repeat whenever possible.
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