Zoo

Sunday 25th February

(Click on the photo of the harbour for the rainy view of Sydney you don't see in the brouchures).

Woke to a rainy day and the dawning realisation that some days the weather will be inclement and we’ll need to find things to do with Ella beyond shopping at Westfield Bondi Junction. Taronga Zoo seemed like a good idea, and in any case, I had a long-overdue date with my family of Macaws and with that spinifex hopping mouse, who has been the cause of all this unrest.

The thing about taking toddlers to the zoo is that, really, after they’ve seen an elephant and/or a monkey, the next best thing is to go running off, or “do walking” as Ella calls it. They simply don’t have the patience or desire to watch echidnas mooching about in the soil or search for platypuses or bilbys. It’s frustrating because I could watch small animals all day, especially at Taronga, with it’s position on the north side of the harbour and uninterrupted views of Sydney’s landmarks.

Of course, she was always going to go running off, and it was always going to be on Daddy’s watch. We discussed it afterwards. We were in the platypus house and I’d gone off to seek them out, leaving Darren to watch Ella. Ella had followed me, without my knowledge, and thinking she was safe, Darren had wandered off. In that brief moment, nobody had an eye on her and she was gone, straight out of the door and down the hill.

“You’ve got her haven’t you?”

“No, she was with you”

Blind panic. The most horrible sinking feeling. We ran out of opposite doors to look for her. By the time I’d searched the back and run out through the front, Darren was hooking her up to her reins. It was a heart-stopping moment and if it had happened somewhere other than a zoo, we’d have been in trouble. Dads can’t cook sausages and they can’t watch kids, it’s a fact.