sharks and rays.

1. Starting off with smaller rays. 
2. Shark + really, really big ray. Impossible to photograph as it spent most of it's time at the bottom. It's around 2x3m and weighs 300kgs. 
3. They're kinda like a cross between elephants and dogs, really.
4. It felt weird feeling them because you could feel them chewing on the peg- like there's a hard beak in their funny little mouth.

5. A ray got cranky at us for just sitting there not feeding him so he started splashing us. 
6. The rays were a lot pushier about being fed. The shark's didn't have a chance. 
7. The rays felt like.... a slimy tounge.
8. Willow preferred feeding them to patting them, although she patted a fair few. 

9. Big ray again.
10. This photo of Willow trying to get the bait on her stick kills me everytime.
11. You could pay extra to go in the water and Willow really, really wanted that. Especially when she saw that you could sit on the steps and get the really big ray to come up onto your lap. She kept trying to stick that foot in the water, hoping a ray would swim onto it/ eat it. A few nearly did.
12. Sulking sharks. 

13 & 14. I don't know any other creative way to say "We fed a lot of rays." But it was fun and all these photos are a reflection of that.
15. A shark briefly came and snuggled in my hand.
16. Hey, little guy.
17. Willow, playing it cool.

M suggested we should go to Nelson Bay for a little holiday, because he's awesome, and we took Willow to the Oz Shark and Ray Centre because we're awesome parents like that.

I asked Willow a few days beforehand how she felt about feeding sharks, and she got all excited and began speculating on what we could feed sharks- in the end, she suggested "all the spiders in the world!"

Then Jaws 2 was on tv and I was all "hey, you know what? This will be an excellent show to watch!"

Fail.

Willow started to get worried, so M cheerfully told her "those are the sharks we're going to feed tomorrow!"

And her little face dropped.

"I don't WANT to feed the shark's anymore!" Willow wailed. "Because then I'll never see poh poh or pa pa or Zack or Aunty Sharon never ever again!"

We tried changing the channel but she complained and wanted to keep watching Jaws, so we did. M tried to explain to Willow that the shark in Jaws was fake, and I tried to explain to her that shark's had a misplaced reputation and silly ignorant people thought of them as evil, ruthless killers, but they weren't. They just looked scary because of their sharp teeth. And yes ok, they ate other things, but so did we- we also ate fish, and we ate chickens and cows, and birds ate worms and other birds- a lot of animals ate other animals to survive. And that's the way it goes. & I hope you won't exclude someone or something just because everyone tells you there is something wrong with them Willow. Because it's not very nice to the person being left out.
I don't know which message got through, if any, but the next day she was excited again to be going.

Exactly.

After feeding the shark's and rays we had lunch (heavenly salmon with asparagus and mash for me, overlooking the bay; massive delicious schnitzel for M, and a bit of both of ours for Willow). We checked into our friendly hotel and I discovered that Willow can recognize the trip adviser owl logo from a distance- she knows it as the owl on pa pa's jacket. Fishing, dinner, bed. Then more markets and more fishing the next day. And that was that. :)