“DIG, dig, dig!”
That is the sound of the tiniest (and arguably cutest) site foreman you’ve ever seen, marching towards a 1.7 tonne mini excavator in the rainforest.
For more than half her life our little girl Rosie, who turns two in June, has seen diggers on the real-life construction site that is Beaudesert CBD on our morning walk around town.
The phrase, “dig, dig, dig” entered her tiny vernacular quite some time ago and she is digger obsessed, regularly chasing us around the house with a book called ‘dig, dump, roll’.
So, when the opportunity arose to review Australia’s first mini excavator park right at Tamborine Mountain, right on our doorstep, taking Rosie along was a no-brainer.
Sandpit to driver’s seat
If you’ve ever experienced Christmas morning with a baby, you’ll know they’re often just as happy to play with the wrapping paper as they are to play with the present itself.
It felt a bit like that with Rosie, who gravitated towards the sandpit rather than being immediately obsessed with the real-life diggers as we might have expected.
Don’t get me wrong – Rosie had several turns of the big diggers, strapped in securely on Zac’s lap and letting us know with her serious facial expressions that she was taking it all in.
But when we took her to the sandpit filled with diggers, dump trucks, buckets and spades, she got happily busy getting Zac to make bucket-shaped sand pillars around the pit like a baby fortress.
Whenever any bigger kids played nearby, Rosie was in people watching heaven, openly staring and taking mental notes of how they manoeuvred the mini machinery.
Something for everyone
Taking Rosie to Dig It was more than a play in the sandpit, some serious excavator rides and a spot of people watching.
In the gorgeous rainforest setting there were also remote-control diggers, a kids’ play area complete with foam bricks and mini wheelbarrows and thought given to visitor comfort, with umbrellas, sunscreen, a cooling and misting station and extra gazebos for shade.
From the moment they imprinted our hands with ‘Dig It’ stamps on arrival (which Rosie found very impressive) to the drive home with a happily exhausted toddler, it was a worthwhile experience for us all.
