Day 3 – Cuddilly Had a Beef With Us

We were not amoosed.

This morning we are all pretty tired. We’ve already had such a full adventure, but we’re not done yet! We started with a caffeine refuel and made our way to meet Suzanne at her farm.

A couple of years ago Drew adopted a Miniature White Galloway cow for my 30th. This trip was planned around going to visit her! My adopted cows name is Cuddilly and she has quite a tragic backstory which resulted in her biological mother Cuddles passing, and being taken in by her adopted mother Tilly (the origin of her name is a tribute to both of them).

We met with Suzanne and another couple who had come to visit their adopted cow Lucy, and made our way down to the paddock to meet the herd. Lucy and Cuddilly were pointed out to us but we were more or less left to our own devices with hair brush in hand to go meet the big beautiful creatures. Cuddilly was very shy and took a bit to warm up to us, but once I made friends with Tilly, she seemed to feel more comfortable around me. I fell in love with Tilly! She’s such a sweet girl who loved a good brush and a scratch!

We had 2 hours allocated to us our in the paddock, and it was such a peaceful time. After about an hour and half, Cuddilly decided that her social battery had depleted, and she needed a time out – on the direct opposite side of the paddock. She couldn’t have put herself further away from the humans! It did give us all a little bit of a chuckle.

While I was playing with all the cows, Amy and Anthony made friends with Suzanne and learnt everything they could about farming and cows, which is something very typical for my very social friends. I wouldn’t be surprised if I hear that they buy land out in the sticks somewhere to have animals and direct access to nature. I’ll happily visit, it’s so calming out here. But it was time to go, we have more to see and experience and create today!

We have a class booked in this afternoon, but on the way we wanted to stop in at the War Memorial and Museum to pay tribute to some of Amy’s family who fought in the war. This wasn’t on our itinerary for this trip but having very little time and having to quickly walk through the exhibits makes me really want to come back and give it the time it needs to explore and appreciate it. I’m really glad we saw the memorial though. I find shrines and temples to be such a soul searching place, where you really end up reflecting on what is important – especially in the memorial area. We found Roy Bitmead’s name on the memorial wall and added our poppy, visited the grave of the unknown soldier and made our way to our next stop at Canberra Glassworks.

We have the boys booked in to a foundation glass blowing class with instructor Nadia at Glassworks. Amy and Anthony have been to this place before and have 2 tumblers they have made here that look pretty amazing, so I’m super excited to see how Drew and Anthony’s creations turn out. Amy and I took to the stands to watch the classes as we were not participating. Despite it being the temperature of the sun in that warehouse, the whole process was incredible to watch. Drew went first and made a spotty red and clear glass and Anthony made a red and yellow spotty one inspired by fire. Nadia did an incredible job explaining every step and process.

We decided we wanted to try Yumko Korean restaurant tonight, which meant making a trip into the Canberra CBD. The most shocking part of the evening for me was the $3 all night parking. Yumko was so, so tasty – their Korean fried chicken was some of the nicest I’ve had, and makes me really keen to visit korea. The Canberra food scene has been top tier. We made a quick stop at the “Big Swoop” which was nearby and decided to try to catch the sunset from the lookout on top of Mount Ainsley again to see a different view of Canberra. When the sun left us, we headed out to get some gelato and and make our way back to the hotel. Tomorrow is our last day of this little mini trip. We still have one more attraction at the National Museum before we start our long drive home.