School Holidays Australia

Brisbane heat and small children are not a great combination once the clock ticks past ten in the morning, so a water play park with somewhere shady to sit has become our non-negotiable for school holidays. We’ve spent the past few months driving out to parks across the south side, the bay and up towards the Gold Coast, mostly chasing recommendations from other parents rather...

We went to Fitzgibbon on a Saturday morning because a friend had sent me a photo of what looked like a row of tiny painted cottages sitting in the middle of a sandpit, and I could not work out from the picture whether it was a park or somebody’s art installation. It turns out it is both. Hidden W...

We’d been in Brisbane long enough that I was properly missing cat company. No cat of our own, no neighbour’s cat leaning on the fence, nothing. So on a day trip down to the Gold Coast I did the obvious thing and looked up whether Surfers Paradise had a cat café. It did — Crazy Cat Café, tucked upstairs on the Boulevard — and we walked in an hour later with zero plan beyond “p...

We found this place completely by accident back in 2023. We’d driven out to look at Dights Falls, parked, and on the walk back there was this gate we hadn’t noticed on the way in — Collingwood Children’s Farm, right there on the Yarra, five minutes from Abbotsford. We’d lived in the inner north for years and had no idea it existed. Walked in on a whim with zero plan and zero ...

I didn’t research this one beforehand, just the opening hours, and honestly I’m glad I didn’t, because the whole day turned into one nice surprise after another. Myuna Farm is out in Doveton, about 40 minutes south-east of the city, and for what it costs to get in, it is genuinely one of the best value days we’ve had with the kids a...