I’m not sure who said “there’s no bad weather only bad clothing” but they may just have been thinking of the Kids Adventure Outdoors festival held this past weekend in Anglesea. The two day festival sees children chose from an extensive list of adventure activities that make the most of the Great Ocean Road’s natural attractions. Activities are held at a selection of venues including the river estuary, Anglesea YMCA, Camp Wilkin and the Festival Hub. Each day kids have the opportunity to chose four activities. What I love about this festival is that the activities cater to the different interests of my children. My eldest is an adrenaline junkie – the high ropes course, and climbing wall were his faves. My nature loving little guy relished in his Estuary Discovery walk – led by environmental scientist educators who opened his mind to the wonders of the natural environment. This included treasure hunting on the beach, and using a drag net to catch and release infant fish species.
Kids Adventure Outdoors Festival
Image by Adventure Types
Unfortunately Victoria brought on some spectacularly bad weather on the first afternoon which saw the festival co-ordinators make the safe decision to cancel the program for the afternoon. Not to be perturbed the YMCA staff at our afternoon venue brought out games and facilitated communal fun for the kids. Day two of the festival saw kids in wet weather gear enjoying the outdoors and adventure activities in the pouring rain – with huge smiles on their faces.
Treasures found at the Kids Adventure Outdoors Festival
The theme of this years Kids Adventure Outdoors was resilience and never could this be displayed better than all the kids that camped overnight in torrential rains. I was less resilient – choosing to stay in a holiday house and sending my husband and two boys out for the campout. While I woke at 4 am worrying about my kids sleeping in tents during what was an epic storm they slept through the night sedated possibly by a life’s worth of Smores just before bedtime.
KAOS campout – Image by Adventure Types
While I’m sure the event organisers were disappointed that nature brought out her worst this past weekend – I’m not. Blue skies make for pretty pictures however my kids came home happy. They haven’t stopped talking about their adventures, the kangaroos they saw when camping. There haven’t been any complaints about weather at all – just smiles!
With the mounting evidence that time in nature is good for our health, and the opportunity to get active with the kids (like I did paddling up stream with a six year old who only seemed able to paddle backwards) this is a great event to put on your calendar for 2018.
Kids Adventure Outdoors
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This is a great guide, and superb for those parents who have kids. I am definitely going to refer back to the post when planning my spring adventures for next month.
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