Zoo

The new seal and penguin exhibits at Melbourne Zoo are open, and they ROCK.

The penguins are in a pool surrounded by tiny sandy dunes. They hurtle up and down their pool, and stop at the ends for a splash and giggle. You can hang over the edge watching them shoot by, plus there are some glass sections on the side of the pool so you can watch them underwater. The girls loved the penguins. So did the mummies.

The seals have another deep pool with lots of fake cement rocks around it, plus a wave machine. It looks credibly like a rocky sea inlet, with little rock shelves. Apparently in their old pool, the deepest part was 1m. In this new pool, they can go down to 5m. And they go down! And up! And down again! And now they do it upside down!

There's also an enormous underground aquarium thingy, with big windows into the penguin and seal pools, plus a few little windows into little pools with seahorses, puffer fish, etc. It was really dark down there, and I worried that not everyone would be OK with that dimness. Old people might fall over. Twenty minutes later I realised that I had my sunglasses on.

Hazel walked up and down and around, and she admired the seagulls. Ivy rode in my sling on my back, and craned to look at the lions. Both girls can now "be a lion" which means going "raaaa". Ivy does it silently, with a big wide mouth.

Hazel seems to be starting a cold. We will see.