Day 4

 you can't see him but Nathan is hiding behind Emma.  Because I told him he had to be in the picture. ha

 hard to see but this is a platypus.  =)

 Nathan (and the 3 older girls) loved these slides.  Mom tried it out too. 

 hard to see but there were 7 (I think?) different satellite dishes you could see

Tuesday had great weather and there were warnings of rain later in the week so we started off with a 45 minute drive out to the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.  All we knew about it was that we would see emus, kangaroos, wallabies and possibly platypus and that it had a great playground.  Our first stop was an old dwelling.  There were gorgeous daffodils and other spring bulbs planted all around.  We had to get photos.  We saw a field with lots of kangaroos including one who would just stand there and pose.  Later we drove back by this lot and there were some emus walking around as well.  We stopped to take a 15 minute walk to a pond of some sort and this ended up turning into a 3 hour walk.  It wouldn't have been that bad but gates were closed off and we were hoping to see the pelican feeding, etc. etc. and it turned out into a BIG walk.  which wasn't good for Dad's knees.  =(  But we got to see lots of nature and on the way out we got to see the platypus playing in the water and climb up a big rock.  We stopped at the playground and it was fun.  They had great slides, a flying fox, a little kids' area, and a bore with a pump so you could pump the water into a little stream that had several dams you could put down or up.  Hard to describe but the girls played with the water stream for over half an hour.  There were lots of wallabies around here and an emu just wandering around the park as well. 
About 10 minutes away was the Deep Space Communication Complex.  We weren't sure if this was going to be interesting but it was.  Those dishes are so huge!  And they had lots of info inside the building along with a fun interactive area for the kids.