Next day it began to pour with rain so we hid in the kitchen area of the campground and just dashed out to the toilets when necessary. Bill and Sash drove through the rain to Bunbury to pick up some exciting birthday packages sent from grandparents in Melbourne. Meanwhile, Kate and Zara wrapped and baked in preparation for the following day's celebrations. Once the rain had died down a bit, Hannah and Kate took the kids to the local pool to burn off some energy before dinner. Sash was in a fever of excitement by this stage - having been counting down the days till his birthday for months, it was actually finally nearly here...
First thing Sash said sleepily to Kate the next morning was 'happy birthday'. Then he got up to a tent decorated with balloons and streamers and an enormous pile of presents from parents, grandparents and even Hannah and Michael! During the frenzy of unwrapping, we were surprised by a visit by a large Malaysian family who were also staying at the campground - they had heard it was sasha's birthday and sang him 'happy birthday', took photos and gave him $5 (spent later in the day on a funky shark ring)! Sasha skyped with his grandparents, Aunty Nina and buddies Liz, Ada and baby Henry. Then to top off all the excitment we had pancakes and birthday cake for breakfast... Sash had dreamed up his birthday cake months before - he wanted a man sitting on a log in the bush with a Tasmanian tiger in the background. A later addition was that the man and the tiger were to be having a staring competition and that there was to be lots of flowers around the log... fortunately he was thrilled by our attempt - a lumpy chocolate cake with a gingerbread man and a plastic tiger squashed onto it, some leaves scattered and and icing flowers dug in. Phew!
We were all buzzing with sugar and excitement by this stage, so Hannah and Michael went to run it off while we headed to the Busselton Jetty to catch the train down to the underwater observatory. The sun was finally shining in a weak sort of way so the train ride was fun. The observatory was also kind of cool - watching the fish in their natural environment and chatting to the very knowledgable young guide. Back on land we let Sash choose what to have for lunch so of course had fish and chips. Next, we cruised out to a town called Donnybrook to enjoy a fabulous free public park playground - supposedly the biggest free playground in the country/hemisphere/world... After Hours of fun we scampered back to the campsite for a quick squid dinner (thanks to Bill and Michael's efforts in the rain on the jetty the precious evening!) before heading off again to watch 'the lorax' and eat choc tops at the drive-in cinema. What a day! Zara pronounced it 'the best birthday ever' - a big call considering it wasn't even hers!
By the time we'd started taking down the streamers the long weekend was upon us and the caravan park had started to fill up... By midday on Saturday it was jam packed with families from Perth. The kids were happy to bounce the day away on the jumping pillow with other kids, but for the adults it was pretty grim. Despite the fact that most people were thee with kids, there was still lots of partying and loud music - even a couple screaming at each other in a seriously nasty way in the middle of the night. In order to get away from the caravan park we dragged the kids off the jumping pillow and drove to the yalingup maze - a very cool multi layered wooden maze with secret doors and all sorts of exciting things. Team BillZara blitzed it but team KateSasha got stumped early on despite their cockiness and may have broken the record form longest time ever taken to complete the Yalingup maze... Hours of fun. But definitely time to move on. So we packed up all of Sasha's presents and headed for Perth.
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