Playtime

An Aussie influenced playground..

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Hunting Skippy

One of the things that Australia is best known for, (apart from killer spiders) is its lean, mean, hopping machine. AKA the kangaroo.

When you first arrive in Australia, driving past the ‘Watch out, watch out there’s a kangaroo about’ road signs can be something a novelty.

They certainly beat the more mundane signs for cows, hedgehogs or ‘Men at work’.

My daughter to this day believes that whenever she sees such a sign, a kangaroo must surely be sitting nearby. Possibly filing it’s nails and waiting to leap out at the next car that comes past.

I’ve lost count of the number of times she has squealed “Kangaroo” at me from the backseat. “Where?” I yelp, slamming my foot on the break. “On the sign over there.” she offers up helpfully.

Roo spotting is indeed an excellent way to keep seat-belt bound children occupied for hours. The chances of them actually seeing one can be slim to none, but it is a golden opportunity to train up their eyesight, and stopping them asking “Are we nearly there yet?”

Now as far as that particular question goes, in my experience, as both an adult and a child, there is only 1 answer – “No, we only left the garage 5 minutes ago and we still have hours to go. Sit still, shut up and look out of the window.”

Oh, the power of parenthood.

If you live in suburbia, like we do, the likelihood of actually coming nose to nose with a kangaroo when you pop out to check your mailbox is nil. It is probably as unlikely as coming home to find one relaxing in a bubble bath, sipping a Baileys and listening to Norah Jones. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be found.

Up in the northern suburbs for instance, the bushland that runs along Burns Beach is home to quite a few. They can often be seen out and about on the hills, normally kicking back, having their tea and watching the sun go down. Connolly Drive is also meant to be a great place to spot them – so we keep being told.

So far, despite keeping my eyes peeled back up to my eyebrows and driving at a speed that would put my age at about 80, I have seen only 2. One was disappearing at a rather brisk pace behind a bush, and if I’m honest, could have just been a figment of my imagination. The other one was dead.

Poor thing, it was rather unsettling to see. Partly because it had most likely gone into battle with a bumper (and obviously lost), and partly because rigamortis must have kicked in with lightening speed. It was laying there on the edge of the road, rolled over on its side, but still in an upright seated position.

Granted this wasn’t the best example of wildlife to shows the kids, but hey, you have to take it where you can get it. Of course kids being kids, they weren’t at all fazed. My son, who was only 1 at the time, ignored Exhibit A, and carried on eating his rice wheels. My daughter, who was 7, was fascinated by the whole idea of it actually being real and dead.

I, on the other hand was deeply disturbed – all the way to the end of the road and up the next hill.

Another close kangaroo encounter came about on Lakeside Drive. We were driving back from Joondalup hospital in the middle of the night, (that would be night my husband tried to die on me) when a rather large kangaroo shot out from the bush and straight in front of the car. Luckily I wasn’t traveling quite as fast as I normally would, or we would have had a freezer full of Skippy steaks to keep our dog going for several years.

Of course there are many other places you can say ‘hello’,  if you don’t feel like patrolling the roads at night. Or if you already have a permanent crick in your neck, from trying to distinguish what is living, breathing mammal, and what is only a piece of drift wood by the side of the road.

Whiteman Park has a kangaroo enclosure which allows you to get up, close and very personal with a whole mob of them. Yes, ‘mob’ is the collective noun for kangaroos. I know, it sounds like they should be wearing football shirts, chanting stupid songs and drinking in the streets.

This is an ideal photo opportunity – a chance to stick Junior as close as he can go without being bitten, and then jump back as you tell him to smile. Yes, I admit, this is coming from personal experience. This hopefully adorable image can then be sent home, as your ‘Look where we live’ photo. Now, if you could somehow manage to pop a Santa hat on the kangaroo, think of the potential for your next family Christmas card…

Yanchep National Park is another great hot-spot. Here the kangaroos are just wandering around, without a fence or an entry ticket insight. Not so easy to get close enough to pat these, but a lovely setting to see them hopping around. The downside of this place is you are effectively walking on a carpet of Roo poo, but it’s a small price to pay for getting so close to nature.

It was on a visit here that my daughter asked one of those question’s. “What is that, hanging down from all those big kangaroos?”

“That would be their balls,” answered my ever so helpful, smirking husband. Great, thanks for that. How to open up a whole avenue of questions that I have absolutely no wish to answer yet.

There is one more place where you can be certain to literally lay your hand on a kangaroos leg. The supermarket. Or any good pet food supply outlet. OK, so maybe it’s not how you imagined wildlife to be – culled, chopped and cellophane wrapped – but it’s still a genuine kangaroo encounter nevertheless.

If you would still rather opt for those with a pulse, then happy hunting. But remember to wash your hands afterward, they can be more than a little whiffy.

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Love Thy Neighbour

There are some boys on our street who make me wish that using an air riffle was legal. They wander around, swearing at the tops of their voices and generally going out of their way to irritate, provoke or pick fights with everyone who gets in their way. As children go, they could best be described as feral.

Over the course of the last year, they have attempted to smash both the street lights with rocks and the curbside with a shot-put. They have run riot through front gardens – breaking trees and trampling flowerbeds. They have removed sprinkler heads, thrown rubbish around and pinched the girls bikes off them when they have ventured out to play.

One week they ‘borrowed’ a shopping trolley from Coles. Taking turns to sit in it, they rode up and down the street at breakneck speed. Had one of them fallen out onto the road, I don’t think I would have battered an eyelid. It was the worry of the trolley knocking another child off their feet or taking chunks out of my car’s paintwork that prompted me to have it collected and returned to it’s rightful home.

One day, after having gone outside and told the group of mouthy boys to stop hammering our curb with the said shot-put, they started chucking limes at our roof tiles. How much harm can you possibly inflict with a piece of fruit you may think. Quite a lot actually. Especially when the limes are rock hard, and the roof tiles are prone to breaking if you so much as snap your fingers in their direction.

You could be forgiven for thinking we live on a inner-city housing estate, with burnt out cars and old mattresses stacked up in the front gardens. Hardly. We live smack back in the middle of suburbia. Think Ramsey Street, without the regular bouts of arson, murder and intrigue.

To some, these underage pests may not sound too bad. It’s just ‘boys being boys’ you might say. I beg to differ. The petty vandalism aside, it’s the attitude, of these boys, barely into double figures, that just blows me away. The way that they turn the air blue when the other kids are trying to play, the constant fighting and the complete lack of respect towards anyone over 18. If you are thinking that the parents are to blame, that children are a result of their upbringing, then yes, I couldn’t agree more. But don’t even get me started on the mother.

Maybe I am officially now ‘old’. I know that the following is certainly going to make me sound that way – It just wasn’t like that when I was growing up. We weren’t allowed to call our parent’s friends by their christian names, we would have been eternally grounded for being cheeky to an adult and probably sent off to foster care had we dared to swear at one. Yet these kids think nothing of screaming all manner of abuse at an adult. They they did just that at a neighbour recently. Why? Because he stepped in and told them to stop using another child as a punch bag.

Maybe it’s me. Perhaps the world has just moved on, and I never got sent the memo about what is now deemed ‘acceptable’. I know that it is now the ‘in thing’ to treat your child like a mini adult. To dress them up to look 18, to let them stay up until they fall asleep, to educate them way beyond their years and to encourage them to join in adult conversations, voicing an opinion about everything they hear.

Teaching good manners and learning when to keep it zipped no longer seems to be a priority to some parents. It’s all about making sure the child feels important in the world. More important than they actually should be.

I have lost count of the number of presents we have given, where there wasn’t even a ‘Thank you’ in return. This winds me up no end. My daughter spends weeks after her birthday and Christmas, sat at the table, writing out thank you letter, after thank you letter. She may only be doing it because I tell her to, but I’d like to believe that this slow and painful exercise in gratitude and appreciation, will last a lifetime.

Saying that, I do have concrete proof that all my years of nagging about the importance of good manners, have not been in vain. Last month she woke up, called for me and said “Please can you get me a bucket Mummy, I think I’m going to be sick”.  I even got a “Thank you”, a couple of minutes later, as she pulled her head out of her Barbie bin, looking slightly green around the gills and covered in last night’s dinner.

My 2 year old is also learning to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ at the moment. Of course he is only parroting back what we say, and has no absolutely no idea why. But this is how kids learn. I go along with the philosophy of getting them while they are young. Hopefully then in years to come, a neighbour will never have to eye him up through their net curtains and wish they had a gun.

As for those loud mouthed pains on our street. It was a happy day for all when a SOLD sign recently went up. ‘Trouble’ is currently packing up and hopefully soon on it’s way. But it just goes to show, no matter where you live in the world, you can choose your house, but it’s completely pot luck who ends up living next door.

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