Narrogin

I'm mostly of the opinion that travelling with small children is like travelling for work. You have to do all the same things, you don't sleep well and you don't have the familiarity of your own equipment. Plus you come home to a heap more work to catch up on (ie washing).

When you look up Narrogin on trip advisor there are only three attractions and one of them is a gun shop. It may not be your typical holiday destination and travelling with children is hard work but my sister is living there at the moment so we decided to give it a go.

I'm pleased to report it was a total success and it genuinely felt like a holiday. I think the primary reason for this is that my sister was with us the whole time so our adult to child ratio was much improved. Also, I was super organised. We knew what we were going to eat for each meal and we knew how we were going to spend our time. There was no need for decision making.

We drove Friday afternoon when the boys were meant to be napping. This was actually a complete fail as they'd been asleep for about 15 minutes when we went up a steep hill and I think their ears must have been hurting as they woke up screaming and didn't fall back asleep again. Not a great start but with the extra adult around tired babies aren't too difficult to manage. We just went for a walk, out for a pub meal, then headed back to our house at half time in the footy to get the children into bed. Three adults, three children, bed time is a breeze.

Saturday we went for another walk around town, stopped at supposedly the best cafe for a coffee (it actually wasn't too bad) and went to an amazing playground. It was genuinely really great and the public toilets were some of the cleanest I've seen. Thanks Royalties for Regions! I was impressed.

We went on a picnic lunch to Yilliminning Rock which is basically a massive rock that you can climb up. Miss 3 thought it was pretty cool. She made little rock castles on top of the big rock and looked at bugs, lizards and flowers. The boys crawled around happily with apparently no concern for their knees which I must admit are looking a little worse for wear.

Saturday night was probably the highlight. We went on a nocturnal walk at Barna Mia which is an animal sanctuary. It's not actually recommended for children under five but I told them our ages when I booked and they didn't discourage me. We weren't too disruptive, although while Miss 3 understood that she had to whisper she didn't quite grasp that moving her feet around on the gravel was also a bit noisy. The boys were in baby carriers so when each got excited we just moved a bit away from the group. It was really fun. We saw bilbies, woylies, boodies and rufous-hare wallabies. I have to admit they do all kind of look the same except for the bilbies with their big ears but it was exciting to just sit quietly and see them sneak up and eat the food laid out for them. All three children fell asleep in the car and didn't transfer at all well but again with three adults and three children, it wasn't too big of a deal getting them into bed.

Sunday morning we went on a bush walk at a nature reserve called Foxes Lair. We climbed up rocks, balanced on logs, looked at the wildflowers and just generally enjoyed a bit of quality nature play. 

We stopped for lunch on the way home at the Quindanning Hotel which is really nice with a great outdoor area where everyone had a good play. Unfortunately the twins fell asleep for five minutes on the way to lunch and then decided they didn't need to sleep at all on the way home which was a bit painful but we managed and all in all it was a great weekend. Go Narrogin.