This wasn’t actually planned as a Father’s Day weekend trip. I picked these particular dates for a couple of reasons. My parents were overseas and I could borrow their car, which has two baby seats already fitted. My usual car only has one, so with three kids to move around it made things a lot easier. It also happened to line up with Charlie and Alex’s mum Kayla being away for a wedding, which meant I could take the boys for an extra night than usual. It wasn’t until later that we realised the Sunday landed on Father’s Day, which meant we had to rush back so Aubrey could make it to lunch with her dad on time. I did bring a pram for Alex, though as it turned out we never actually ended up using it. This was also my first trip away in quite a while, and the first time going away with Morgan and Aubrey together as well, so there was a fair bit riding on it going well.
I planned the whole trip with Claude AI beforehand, which helped find places that matched what we were after, mostly op shops and family-friendly stuff along the way. We didn’t end up sticking to the plan completely though, since we kept stopping at unscheduled places we spotted along the drive instead.
Leaving Werribee
Morgan met us at my place around 9am on the Friday. She and Aubrey had already grabbed McDonald’s on their way over, having called ahead to ask what I wanted. We picked up the kids on the way through from there. Kayla had called me earlier that morning to give me a heads up that Alex was having a bit of a meltdown. He’d left an accessory for one of his other blue Power Rangers figures at childcare the day before, and had only just realised it was missing. So when I picked him up I made sure to bring along a Power Rangers SPD Blue Ranger figure with a giant robot arm as a surprise, which went down very well and sorted the mood out completely. Travelling with three kids under nine is never exactly relaxing, but we had the whole weekend ahead of us so nobody was in too much of a rush. We stopped at one of those roadside fruit shops off the side of the freeway, the kind with funny signposts advertising their prices for a few kilometres beforehand to lure you in. We picked up bananas, mangoes and blueberries, so we could tell ourselves we’d packed healthy snacks too.
Savers and the Cursed Frog
From there it turned into a proper op shopping run through Geelong and Torquay. I wasn’t expecting to walk away with quite this much of a haul. The Savers wasn’t even part of the original plan, actually. We spotted it on the way and pulled in on a whim. I’d never been to that one before and didn’t even know it existed until we drove past it.
Alex refused to leave his new blue SPD Power Ranger in the car so I made sure to take a photo in case I needed to prove it was already ours.
At Savers, we found a handmade plush frog doll, holding a little basket with some flowers in it, that Aubrey grabbed straight away and nicknamed “the cursed frog,” for reasons I still don’t fully understand. She brought it with her absolutely everywhere for the rest of the trip, and we spent a good chunk of the weekend telling her we were going to throw it off every bridge we drove over. She was having none of it and guarded that thing fiercely the whole time. I got Alex a bagged set with a green Power Rangers Mystic Force figure and a Gamora figure from Guardians of the Galaxy, and Charlie came away with a squishmallow, a Squidward doll from SpongeBob SquarePants, and a pretty impressive kids’ book full of lenticular moving animal pictures. Savers also had two bags of Disney Infinity Star Wars figures, which Alex had a lot of fun with. He really liked the Obi-Wan Kenobi one, probably because of the blue lightsaber.
Pop Cultcha and The Paddock
Pop Cultcha, The Paddock Bakery and Geelong Vintage Market are all in the same block within the old Federal Mills precinct in North Geelong, with The Paddock sitting right next door to Pop Cultcha, so it was an easy stretch of walking between all three. Pop Cultcha is a proper collector’s warehouse full of life-size statues, comic memorabilia and vinyl. The boys got a good scare from a life-size T-Rex head near the entrance and spent a while checking out a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sewer display. I picked up a MOTU-style Misfits Danzig figure for myself and a Power Rangers Beast Morphers bad guy called Tronic for Alex, though that one never actually got opened over the course of the whole trip.
Charlie wanted a Lightning McQueen diecast car from the Cars films, so we grabbed him one. On the way out Alex somehow ended up holding a second copy of the same car, and the alarms went off at the door. The staff figured they’d just forgotten to demagnetise the security sticker on it and told us not to worry about it, but we handed it back anyway since we didn’t need two. When we finally opened Charlie’s one later in the trip, it turned out you need a screwdriver to get the car off the plastic mount it’s fixed to inside the packaging, and I didn’t have one with me, so he couldn’t actually play with it properly the whole time we were away.
From there it was straight to The Paddock Bakery for doughnuts. The kids both went for Nutella ones and made a fair mess of themselves early on, until Morgan suggested halfway through getting them to use a spoon instead, which helped a lot.
Geelong Vintage Market
A retro consignment market called Geelong Vintage Market added even more to the pile. It’s set up as a bunch of little stalls owned by different people, but the staff at the front handle all the actual sales for everyone. Everything has a sticker on it with a shop number, and if what you want is in one of the locked cabinets, which the best action figures usually were, you have to track down a staff member to get the keys out. This time it was a yellow Power Rangers finger puppet that used to come free with a 90s fast food meal, a 2013 reissue Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Foot Soldier figure, and a Power Rangers in Space Blue Ranger. I went with the 2013 reissue over the vintage original they also had, mainly because it was about half the price. I probably would have grabbed the vintage one too if I could, but my pay hadn’t hit my account yet and we still needed money for food. Foot Soldiers are the kind of figure you’re meant to collect multiples of, so I didn’t mind ending up with the cheaper version over the older one. The same market also had a genuinely bizarre carved wooden lion statue on display, easily the strangest thing we saw all weekend. While we browsed, the kids started a running game of spotting and counting frogs around the shop, and their definition of what counted as a frog got looser with every aisle, eventually stretching to include a few of the Ninja Turtle figures, an Incredible Hulk figure, and pretty much any green object they came across, tractors and cars included.
Chips, Shopping and the Church Op Shop
On the way into Anglesea, Morgan and I worked through a few packets of Chappy’s potato chips, ham and mustard and pickled onion flavours. I’m properly addicted to those chips. The only place I’ve ever found them is a shop near my work, so I always stock up when I’m there. Aubrey spent a good chunk of this leg of the drive reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel out loud to Charlie in the back seat, which kept both of them entertained.
We’d originally planned to stop at a local butcher called Stabby’s for the weekend’s meat, but in the end just did all our grocery shopping at IGA Anglesea in one go, which was easier. We timed it so we went straight there right before arriving at BIG4, which meant we didn’t have to head back out again later. There was a place called Morgans Bar & Grill right near the IGA that looked tempting, but we were trying not to spend too much on the trip, so we stuck to cooking our own food instead. Turns out we didn’t need it anyway, since we basically had our own Morgan’s Bar & Grill back at the accommodation, seeing as Morgan did all the actual cooking for the weekend. IGA had icy poles on sale too, so we grabbed a bunch of those. Alex latched onto the lemonade ones in the blue packet and spent a good chunk of the weekend insisting the ice block was “very light blue” rather than white, because he only likes blue things and had apparently decided this one counted.
There was also a church op shop we ducked into, Bellbrae Op Shop, separate from the others, where we picked up three Jurassic World dinosaur figures at $2 each, which probably would have retailed for $20 or more apiece, along with a Schleich dragon.
Near the IGA there was another op shop, Seaside Seconds, this one in a small strip of shops rather than attached to a church. Morgan grabbed a pair of binoculars there, I got myself a Happy Meal Changeables toy (the box itself transforms into a dinosaur), and I think I also picked up a book for Aubrey. She ended up with about three books across the whole trip, which suited her fine given how much she loves reading.
Looking back at it, I was genuinely impressed with how much Power Rangers stuff we managed to find across the weekend. I rarely come across any of those figures at op shops normally, so getting that many in one trip felt like a bit of a win.
Checking In and the Bunk Bed Situation
Check-in at BIG4 Anglesea is from 2pm and we rolled in right on time. We were in Room 99, which was a great spot, right near the entrance and just a short walk from the games room. The 3 Bedroom Unit was genuinely well set up with a full kitchen and dishwasher and everything you’d need. We had a late lunch not long after, ham and cheese sandwiches for the grown-ups and Nutella ones for the boys.
It got a bit awkward almost straight away, though. Aubrey claimed the master bedroom the second we walked in and started unpacking before anyone had really talked about it. The other two rooms had two single beds and a set of bunk beds. Charlie and Alex were surprisingly keen on the single-bed room and happily unpacked their stuff in there too onto the little bedside table for display, though I had a feeling from the start they’d end up back in my bed by bedtime anyway, and they did. That left Aubrey needing to move out of the master and into the bunk room, which she was not happy about at all. She was in a proper mood for a good chunk of the evening because of it. Morgan ended up taking over the single-bed room once the boys abandoned it, and on the second night Aubrey gave up on the bunk room altogether and slept on the couch instead. Next time we’re sorting out who’s sleeping where before we even leave home.
The Playground and Friday Dinner
Once we’d settled in, we headed out to the park’s own playground, which has a proper wrecked pirate ship structure the kids could climb through, plus a jumping pillow that Charlie and Alex spent a fair bit of time wrestling around on. Alex spent a good chunk of the evening wandering the hallway, pointing a banana around like a gun. Dinner that night was chicken nuggets and chips, even though there was a pizza van parked right in front of us the whole time, because we were determined to be cheap about it. I did try to make mine a bit fancier by putting truffle seasoning on the nuggets, which felt like a reasonable way to justify the whole thing.
Evenings In
The master bedroom had its own TV, so the plan was to hook the iPad up to it for movie nights, but the HDMI adapter refused to cooperate no matter what we tried. The TV was on a fairly shaky wall-mounted stand, and while I was fiddling around trying to get the adapter connected, I knocked an empty glass that had been sitting on top of the DVD player, and it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces on the floor. So we fell back on the TV and DVDs instead, while the Nintendo Switch 2 kept Charlie busy on a fairly serious Minecraft session most evenings. When he wasn’t on the Switch, he worked through a colouring book and some stickers that Kayla had packed for him.
Reception does offer free DVD hire along with board games to borrow and alcohol for sale, which sounds handy in theory, but the DVD selection wasn’t really my speed, and the kids wanted Star Wars, which they didn’t seem to have. It’s possible all the good stuff was already out on loan to other guests. Luckily we’d packed a couple of our own. Looney Tunes ran quietly in the background off DVD, followed by some All Aussie Adventures on the first night, which the kids weren’t particularly fussed about. Nickelodeon and ABC Kids filled in the gaps, and we started Small Soldiers on the first night and Who Framed Roger Rabbit on another, both of which we’d brought from home. We didn’t finish either one before someone lost interest or fell asleep. We never made use of the park’s camp kitchen either, since our unit had its own kitchenette and there wasn’t much reason to go elsewhere to cook.
One night’s dinner was a creamy mushroom tagliatelle out on the unit’s private balcony with a cider in hand, while Charlie kept building away on Minecraft between mouthfuls. That balcony turned out to be one of the nicer surprises of the unit, a good spot to sit outside once the kids had wound down.
We tried a game of Uno on the floor that fell apart when Aubrey found out the rest of us play fast and loose with the rules. Alex had his own approach, refusing to hold anything but blue cards, which is a bold strategy that didn’t work out for him at all.
Alex is a big Power Rangers fan, so on the first night I put on some of the Mystic Force series for him on my phone, a show he hadn’t actually seen before, since that was the same green figure we’d picked up at Savers earlier that day.
Saturday Morning: Kangaroos
Breakfast was mouse traps for Morgan, which is just a savoury pastry and not an actual trap, and Nutella sandwiches for the kids, who somehow decided that was going to be their breakfast, lunch and dinner request for the rest of the day. The boys also had gingerbread men every single morning on top of that, and between the gingerbread men and the Nutella sandwiches we managed to run right out of bread by the end of the trip.
Saturday’s main event was the Anglesea Golf Club kangaroo tour, which worked out to $48 for the family rate covering four of us, plus an extra $8 for the third child, so $56 all up for the two adults and three kids. You’re taken around on a big golf cart with the guide, stopping a few times along the way to get out and walk closer to the kangaroos scattered across the fairways. There’s a wooden cutout kangaroo family at the entrance for a photo, and Aubrey’s face poking out of the joey’s pouch is now a permanent fixture on my camera roll. The real kangaroos were just as good, grazing peacefully in family groups with joeys tucked into pouches, not bothered at all by a line of excited kids walking past. We were lucky to avoid rain.
It’s a genuinely good activity for young kids, except our guide was surprisingly detailed about kangaroo anatomy, going into more detail about where a male kangaroo’s anatomy sits and how a mother licks a specific area to guide a joey out than I was ready to hear on a Saturday morning. I don’t think I actually had to explain any of it to the kids in the end though, since I’m fairly sure none of them were really listening. I did find a kangaroo spine bone on the ground at one point and handed it to Charlie, who took one look at it, declared it yucky, and spent the rest of the walk trying to throw it away.
Saturday Afternoon: Pool and Games Room
We kept costs down by having lunch back at the cabin instead of eating out twice, which worked out well once Morgan’s brother Josh, who’s Aubrey’s uncle, dropped by from nearby Geelong in the early afternoon for a late lunch and a hang. We made homemade burgers and chicken wings together while the kids circled hungrily.
The afternoon turned into a proper splash session in the indoor pool. I’d dug out my own vintage Pokemon and Power Rangers beach towels from when I was a kid, which the boys had never seen before and were pretty excited about. Charlie claimed the Pokemon one and Alex got the Power Rangers one, which suited him fine given how much he loves them. Aubrey spent most of her time in the big pool while my two were in the kids’ pool, and Morgan and Josh got a chance to sit and chat while she was in there. The big pool had a small water slide that looked pretty cool, though myself and the boys never actually got around to using it. The water was very warm, and honestly I barely got wet past my knees the whole time. Charlie and Alex were fully committed to the pool noodle wars in the kids’ pool.
It wasn’t all fun though. At one point Alex bolted out of the kids’ pool and straight into the big pool before anyone could stop him, and went under. Someone nearby had him out of the water within seconds and passed him straight to me. I got there in a heartbeat, though I’ll admit I only had one thong on by that point, having lost the other somewhere in the scramble. Surprisingly he didn’t even cry, just seemed a bit stunned, but he made sure not to go anywhere near the big pool again for the rest of the trip. We kept a much closer eye on him after that.
On the way there, we stopped off at a sandpit with a big driftwood log across it.
We headed to the BIG4 games room later that afternoon, where Morgan took on Charlie and Aubrey at foosball and lost. Aubrey stormed off after a dispute over Morgan starting play before she was ready, being very particular about the rules as always, but came back for a rematch that ended on good terms. Alex found his own entertainment sitting at the racing game cabinet, happily pretending to play without a coin anywhere near the slot. There’s also a toddler playroom attached to the games room, where Alex spent a while riding around on a rocking horse-type toy.
Dinner was carbonara and garlic bread, plain and generic rather than anything fancy, since that’s the only way the kids will actually eat it. Any cheese or extras on top and they won’t touch it. It’s always a winner with them as long as it’s kept simple. The meal was punctuated by Aubrey’s ongoing campaign to wrestle Morgan, and Charlie generously offering everyone a bite of his pancakes from earlier in the day, because apparently pancakes count at any meal when you’re five.
Sunday: Getting Aubrey Home
Sunday came with some real time pressure. Aubrey needed to be back by 11:45am. Checkout at BIG4 is 10am, so the morning was tight but manageable. Alex managed to obliterate a chocolate muffin for breakfast, making almost as much mess as the smashed glass from a couple of nights before. We ended up grabbing the big dustpan and shovel from the camp kitchen to clean it up, which was a lot more convenient than the tiny one that came with our unit, one we couldn’t actually find until later in the trip anyway.
We played a calm game of the 2-player variation of Quoridor with Aubrey before packing the car, a nice quiet way to end the trip with her before the handover. I’ve beaten her every time we’ve played so far, though she’s getting better each round, so I don’t think that’s going to last much longer. In the end, Aubrey met up with her dad in Werribee rather than Williams Landing, while Morgan used the time to go see her own dad, who’s also called Steve and lives not far from my place.
Loading the car came with one last local hazard. The resident cockatoos were more interested in our rubbish bins than anything else, and we caught one perched on the balcony railing eating something it had swiped from one. Morgan ended up shooing it off with a broom like something out of a cartoon. The cursed frog made the trip home too, tucked under someone’s arm for the whole drive.
On the way we also spotted a payphone booth done up in a Ren & Stimpy design, repurposed as a free public WiFi hotspot. It looked official enough that I ended up googling it later to check, and it turns out it is an actual Telstra campaign called Free For All, rolled out across thousands of their payphones around the country to remind people the calls are free, with a whole cast of licensed characters plastered on them.
We passed some of the drive playing “I went to the shop”, the game where everyone takes turns adding an item to a growing list and has to recite the whole thing back in order. We made the drive home with no other stops and no traffic issues, and Aubrey made it to lunch right on time.
Would We Go Back?
Yes, definitely. BIG4 Anglesea delivers on the family-friendly stuff pretty well: indoor pool, playground, games room, cockatoos wandering the grounds, and a location that’s a short walk from the beach with a genuinely good kangaroo tour nearby. Funnily enough, we never actually made it down to the beach itself this trip, even though it’s right there. We were too busy making the most of everything on-site instead. The park does have its own dedicated cinema/movie room too, which is pretty basic but would be genuinely useful for anyone camping without their own TV.
Looking at the full list of facilities on the park’s own website, there’s still plenty we didn’t get to: the BMX track (we didn’t have room in the car to bring any bikes this time), the giant outdoor chess set, the splash park, and table tennis all went untouched, so there’s a good excuse to go back and tick a few more off. The facilities also felt noticeably newer and better looked after than another BIG4 park I’ve stayed at before, which made a real difference to how the whole trip felt. The only thing I’d change for next time isn’t really about the park at all, it’s us. Sorting out sleeping arrangements before we go would save everyone a bit of grief.
Practical Details
Address: 45 Murray St, Anglesea VIC 3230
Check-in: from 2pm | Check-out: 10am (late check-out available for a fee, subject to availability)
Parking: one car per unit is included, extra cars go on the street
Pool towels: bath towels are provided but pool towels are BYO
DVD hire: free at reception, though the selection is a bit hit and miss, worth packing a couple of your own just in case
Kangaroo tour: Anglesea Golf Club, $48 family rate (2 adults + 2 kids) plus $8 per extra child, book ahead
