Australia Day races!

This year we enjoyed celebrating Australia Day (January 26) at Uncle Tyden and Aunty Anne's house and even though it was a bit wet (thanks to ex-tropical cyclone Oswald!) we still got into the spirit of things. Eli was incredibly excited about the prospect of toad races, but the wait was killing him (strangely enough noone else seemed quite as excited as he was), so he and I found about a dozen snails and decided to host our very own Australia Day races.

And then the race was on! There was a bit of a pile up at the starting line, with quite a few snails caught in a nasty tangle, but one in particular (aptly called 'Australia') was "quick" out of the blocks and went on to win the race (it had to slime it's way across three of the planks to win)! The snail called Melbourne came in second and China was third (Eli came up with these names, not me!), with Sydney failing to finish - he turned around and headed back towards the starting line. Most of the snails in the original pile up ended up getting pulled along by the lead snail in that pack - a tremendous show of strength but sadly lacking in pace.  Given the speed (or lack thereof) of snails, the snail race was able to occupy Eli for long enough that he forgot about the toad race (at least for a little while).

Of course after his snail races were run and done, Eli quickly got back onto the idea of the toad race and began pestering Debbie, the race organiser. Fortunately, he was somewhat placated by the fact that Glenn had donated one of his racing toads to Eli - this meant that Eli had to come up with a name and he actually had a toad to cheer on. Glenn had glued an Australian Flag onto the toad's back (all toads needed to be decorated and be identifiable by the race stewards). After some deliberation, he decided to call his toad 'Yoko', in honour of our crayfish that evaded our turtles for a long time (before getting crunched!). He decided that Yoko the toad was a very fast toad and that he would surely like vegemite - like all good Australians. Curiously enough (for those of you who don't know), none of the racing toads are actually Australian - they are a declared pest species that was introduced to control a cane beetle (which did not work) but have since spread far and wide and caused great havoc with our native wildlife, either by eating it (this includes bugs, worms, frogs, lizards and even small birds and mammals) or poisoning it (the cane toad has poison sacs either side of it's head that can kill dogs and native animals). Needless to say, after the races the cane toads were due to be disposed of...but I digress. The rules of toad racing are pretty simple - you place all of the toads in a box or bucket, turn it over and let them go! The first toad to cross the finish line in any location (the finish line is a garden hose arranged in a circle around the racing arena) is the winner and the winner took home a trophy (which was a taxidermed toad with a little plaque). Here's a video of the official Australia Day toad race:

Eli's toad fared quite well, but a large and particularly ugly toad (belonging to the family of the race organiser!) won the race. A second race was then run (with no prizes on offer) and Eli sped off after one of the faster toads that made a dash for the pool. Some of the other kids tried retrieving it, but only Eli could scoop it up (what can I say, he's a natural!). The excitement of the toad races was soon over, but then Eli caught wind of the fact that a few other prizes were also up for grabs. The first was for the 'ugliest toad' and the second was for the 'most popular name' for a toad. Eli went straight into his lobbyist/campaign mode and was very keen to learn the result of the 'most popular name' competition - I'm sure that Debbie had had quite enough of him by the end of the day. After surveying all 19 kids and 15 adults (with the exception of those that were too young to contribute meaningfully), Debbie tallied up the votes. It was a close call, with 'Red Racer' receiving a lot of popular votes, but in the end 'Yoko' was announced the winner of the 'most popular name' competition. Eli was thrilled! His prize was a squirter bottle (plus chemicals) for chasing toads away. I don't think we'll be using it, but just being announced the winner was enough to put a big smile on Eli's face. And he's already talking up next year's event, suggesting that we need to search high and low in our neighbourhood for a super fast toad...something to look forward to in January 2014!