Amelie had a dentist appointment yesterday so the kids and I went down to Healesville to have her front teeth checked - she had banged them hard on her knee when we were in Esperance a few weeks ago, then hit them again on LiAM's head a week or so later, and they have been bleeding and looking a funny colour since then.
The dentist said they were about to fall out (they are both baby teeth) and there's nothing to worry about, so that's a relief. He wants to get her back in for a filling - I'll wait and see when she's ready for that then book her back in.
Seeing as we were in town I was happy to hang around and explore somewhere. The kids wanted milkshakes from the fish and chip shop near Coles, where we often used to buy milkshakes before our trip. We started walking over, then talked about going to the library - LiAM realised that he'd want the iPad and his iPod if we went to the library so the kids kept walking to the shop and I went back to get the car. I couldn't find them when I arrived, then Caitlin texted to say they were in the library - the guy at the fish and chip shop had said they couldn't do milkshakes - unsure if that was just for today or permanently.
We hung out at the library for a while, reading books, finding books and DVDs to borrow, and playing on the playstation (Lego Indiana Jones) then Caitlin went over to the ice-cream shop to get milkshakes from there. They were delicious - more expensive and much tastier than the ones we normally get.
Everyone was keen to go to the Sanctuary, and I was pleased I'd thought to suggest it. We can go as often as we want on our membership, and it's so close to home, I hope we continue to pop in whenever we are in Healesville. We saw a lot in the couple of hours we were there. There've been some changes - there are cassowaries, a cool new koala exhibit and we hadn't been in the new lyrebird exhibit either. We watched the bird show, excellent as always, and we were all very very excited to see the wedge-tailed eagle when she came out. We went to feed the parrots - Caitlin was able to hold a red-tailed black cockatoo, it wouldn't go onto the arms of the other kids, and none of the parrots were interested in the food we offered them (provided by the keepers) - it was still great to see them and Caitlin was thrilled about the cockatoo. We saw the pelicans, bats, wallabies, more birds and the goannas, then raced back for the dingo talk, which seemed even more relevant after meeting dingoes on our trip. We learnt that the biodiversity on the dingo side of the dingo fence is in better shape than the non-dingo side. Makes sense really, if you take out the top predator, things change a lot. Also the dingoes keep the cat and fox populations under control. We saw echidnas and discovered they have rear facing claws on their rear feet. We saw a keeper syringe feeding a very old koala and talked to her about how they were helping this koala (she was 18), and LiAM asked about the echidna claws - it's so they can scratch themselves without getting caught in their own spikes.
It was a very enjoyable afternoon and I'm looking forward to going a lot more often and remembering to really explore our own region like we did at all the places we stayed on our trip.
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