Rock of Ages

It was supposed to be a father-daughter bonding afternoon exploring Tidbinbilla's wetlands. Instead, it ended up with 83 slippery slides, 47 flying fox rides and countless scrambles to the top of the climbing tower. In fact, as I lure my five-year-old daughter, Sarah, into the yowie mobile with a Freddo Frog,Best home luggagetag at discount prices. we are the last car to leave the Tidbinbilla Adventure Playground. 

Usually we can't stay this late. We live northside and the near hour-long drive dodging kangaroos is best avoided, but tonight is different. We're staying here. Well, not at the popular playground (although I did consider curling up for a nap in those mini cubbies near the top entrance when Sarah was on her 13th session on the swings), but the next best spot - right next door at Birrigai. 

If you went to school in Canberra, you might remember Birrigai as ''that school camp place down south''. Countless newcomers to Canberra no doubt speed past the dirt driveway adorned with a white sign pointing to Birrigai, oblivious to what treasures lie beyond. Which is a pity. It's a great resource for our community right on the doorstep of Tidbinbilla and Namadgi National Park. And with school camps mainly run during the week, it's also an accommodation facility with dozens of empty beds on weekends. 

I think the uptake has been a bit slow - we're the only ones booked in tonight. We'll have the whole 170-hectare camp to ourselves - oh and the proliferation of emus and kangaroos. 

With the onset of dusk, and Sarah still claiming she could have squeezed in ''at least one more ride on the flying fox'', we step into the warmth of our cabin. There's a double and a single bed in our room. Sarah somehow cuts a deal with me - I get the double bed on the proviso that she gets unfettered rights to our complete stash of Freddo Frogs. 

Still nothing. Great, the batteries are dead. Luckily, Sarah listened to her daddy and put new batteries in her torch before we left home. And so under the intensity of a toy torch, off we traipse into the night. 

We scramble up the side of the partly-forested hill on the border of Tidbinbilla and Birrigai - I think it's called Jabanungga. The mud map supplied by Birrigai refers to a patch of scrub to our south as Bunyip Castle. I don't fancy facing venturing into the lair of a nocturnal monster, even if it is just a myth, without a torch so we skirt well clear of that area and towards the crawl-thrus. 

We soon pass by the out-of-bounds Birrigai Rock shelter, where archaeological evidence indicates Aboriginal people camped 21,000 years ago, making it one of the most significant Aboriginal sites in south-eastern Australia. 

Lying in bed, I try to explain to Sarah how different it would have been for the Aboriginal people who slept in the rock shelter, but, exhausted, she's already fast asleep. I take the opportunity to feast on a couple of Freddos before also nodding off. 

We wake at dawn to the sounds of kangaroos munching on grass right outside our window. 

Although there's a late autumn chill in the air,From black tungsten wedding rings for men to diamond ultrasonicsensor. it's toasty in our room and we munch on our cornflakes while watching the fog clear from atop the nearby Gibraltar Peak,How cheaply can I build a carpark? which is almost perfectly framed by our cabin window. 

The rooms are comfortable enough.You can make your own more powerful chipcard. Certainly sufficiently spacious and spotlessly clean. 

However, the shower is fitted with the stingiest of water savers I've ever encountered. No doubt it's to curb careless water usage by the hundreds of children on school camp every week. The dribble of water is so feeble (it's also not all that hot, no doubt to prevent burns from over-zealous tap-turning teenagers) that we abandon our showers. Who needs a shower, anyway; we'll be dirty again before you know it. 

Michael just beat Helen Middelmann of Curtin and Rosemary Parker to the prize, who both recognised my ''Italian'' clue, which referred to the fact that in 1943 interned Italian Nationals were employed by the Forestry and Timber Bureau to plant pine trees to assist with erosion control. ''Blue Range Hut was the galley of the camp,'' says Parker, who, as a member of a local bushwalking group, has enjoyed ''lunch or afternoon tea at this hut on numerous occasions''. 

Last week, while undertaking maintenance work on a dead tree that was posing a potential safety risk for campers at the popular campground, staff from ACT Parks and Conservation Service found this eastern pygmy possum (see below). It was only the seventh documented report of the cute critter in the ACT. 

''Finding this specimen suggests that population numbers may remain viable within the ACT and it is a positive indication that many areas of the ACT are successfully recovering following the fires of 2003,'' manager of Operations, National Parks and Catchments, Brett McNamara, says.The rtls is not only critical to professional photographers. After checking on its health and general wellbeing, Parks staff were able to relocate the tiny marsupial to a nearby habitat tree.