While passing back through Sydney, I took the opportunity to spend some time volunteering with Merlin’s Magic Wand, a charity that arranges magical and entertaining days for sick and disadvantaged children around the world. In Partnership with Manly SEA LIFE Sanctuary, Merlin’s Magic Wand organised a marine themed day for all the kids at Bear Cottage. To make this day full of excitement and fun, we decided to dress up as superheroes! (This also helped us keep their attention).

We brought along a portable touch pool, which included an array of shark eggs, shells, sea stars and sea urchins. This was a big hit, and I’m happy to say that we convinced almost every child to touch the live sea urchins in the pool! This was a great opportunity to teach them a little about the items/animals they were interacting with. By the end of the day they all knew that some, but not all sharks lay eggs, that sea urchins can move every one of their arms to help it crawl along the sea floor, and that if a sea star loses an arm, the arm can grow into a completely new sea star!

Along with the touch pool, we also brought along a whole bunch of other cool stuff for the kids to interact with. Cat Woman and Wonder Woman teamed up to take control of the creative table where they were colouring in all sorts of interesting animals, drawing and making some pretty sweet crowns and bangles. Right next to them we had our face painting station which was flat out all day!

Superman (who remarkably looks like me) was manning the dry exhibits table. He had some pretty interesting things for everyone to check out; an old sea turtle shell that had been shed, penguin egg shells, crocodile models, shark eggs, a whole puffer fish and so much more! He was kept pretty busy with a bunch of questions from these young and interested minds. It felt very rewarding to be there sharing our knowledge with these eager children, who just may be able to help our oceans in the future.

At the end of the day we were invited to have some cake. Even superheroes need a cake break every now and again!