Kids driving diggers? Australia’s newest theme park is mind-blowing

“Digger! Yellow digger! Green digger!”

My kids are obsessed with diggers. I don’t know why. I don’t know how this happened. But they’re five and two and they are obsessed with earth-moving equipment.

They’ll sit there in the back of our car on any drive, constantly scanning for roadworks. “Digger! Dada, digger! Craaaaaaane!”

Dig IT bills itself as Australia’s first digger park for kids.

This is confusing because I work behind a desk all day and I ride a Vespa. This interest in heavy-duty machinery did not come from me.

But still, the obsession is real, which is why as soon as I heard about Dig IT, I knew.

We have to go here. We have to try this. Our kids are going to lose their minds.

Dig IT bills itself as Australia’s first digger park for kids. You read correctly: children get to drive real earth-moving equipment. They get to climb up into the driver’s seat and dig giant holes, and stack piles of car tyres, and use wrecking balls to knock down towers of logs.

If you have children of a certain age, I don’t need to say anything more. You’ve probably stopped reading anyway. You’re already booking it. Shut up and take my money.

For everyone who’s left, allow me to take you on a journey to Tamborine Mountain, on Queensland’s Scenic Rim, on the side of a windy road in gorgeous bushland. This is Thunderbird Park, a place I used to visit when I was a kid, a campsite, lodge and activity centre that’s been around long enough to know exactly what it’s doing.

Under the shade of the big gum trees here you can play laser skirmish, mini-golf, pickleball or tread the high wires of the Treetop Challenge. And now, you can get behind the joystick controls of a Cat 1.7-tonne mini hydraulic excavator.

We can take a second here to acknowledge something obvious: you, the parent, are also pretty pumped about the idea of piloting a Cat 1.7-tonne mini hydraulic excavator, even if you, like me, have no idea what that actually is.

Annika Leiper and son Archer, 4, are among the first to try Dig It at Thunderbird Park in Queensland.

Children under the age of four require an adult to sit in the cockpit with them at Dig IT, which means if your junior digger-obsessive is only small, you too will get to dig big holes and stack tyres and knock over logs with wrecking balls. I know, right?

And so we arrive one crisp morning up the top of the mountain, and make our way through the car park to Dig IT.

There’s a quick check-in where the kids are given fluoro vests and little hard hats, and then a safety briefing, which is necessary because no one needs any sort of qualification or training to take part, and children of any age can give it a bash.

Then, digger time. The park is split into four areas: the Dig IT zone, where you dig holes; the Demolition Zone, where you use the wrecking ball; the Claw and Croc Zone, where you stack tyres; and the RC Zone, where kids can play with small, remote-controlled diggers.

Children under the age of four require an adult to sit in the cockpit with them.Credit: Luke Marsden

We’re starting off with the Claw and Croc Zone, and my kids are losing their minds. Actual diggers, up close, and we get to drive them?

I pair up with my two-year-old, and he just can’t take it all in. The joysticks, the big claw, the tyres, the little crocodiles – “Crocodiles!” – that you can grab with a hook. He sits there on my lap stunned by the greatness of it all, while Dada tries to work the joysticks and pick things up.

There hasn’t been this level of mutual joy since we watched the cricket episode of Bluey.

Then we hit the RC Zone, and the Dig IT Zone, and it just gets more enjoyable, more exciting.

Hot tip though: bring snacks. Like any operator of earth-moving equipment, your kids are going to require a relaxed smoko midway through.

Finally, we make our way to the Demolition Zone. This is the one they’ve been looking forward to most: using a wrecking ball to smash over towers of logs. This is where you have to stop yourself wresting the controls from your kid and going crazy.

The digger obsession has never been stronger. Probably for the kids, too.

The details

Visit

Dig IT, at Thunderbird Park in Tamborine Mountain, is open every weekend and school holidays. Admission for a two-hour session is $59 per child, adult minders free. Advance bookings highly recommended – see website.

More

thunderbirdpark.com

The writer visited as a guest of Dig IT.