Arise, Sir Hewson

I read in the news that Her Majesty has finally given in and awarded Mr Hewson an honorary knighthood. She sent the ambassador to present it because she couldn't trust herself with him. Still hot after all these years.

I don't blame her. You know my mantra. If I see Bono, he's getting it.

What next? Bono for PM? Dalai Lama? Pope? Like Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds, he'd look "smashing in red".

Daddy or Chips?

Last time we came to Australia we flew over to Perth to watch an ashes test match. We had tickets for the first three days with the option to attend the fourth.

The match was hopeless; the only highlight a Yorkshireman who did a cracking impression of a claxon every time Brett Lee came in to bowl. I can't even remember the score, just the claxon man.

By the end of day two we'd decided to give it up as a bad job. On the Sunday we drove our hire car up the coast to Hillary's boatyard instead, listening to CMJ and Blowers covering the cricket for Test Match Special. It was a wise choice; the cricket was over by lunchtime.

It was a clear, warm day and Hillary's was full of families with small children, some paddling in the water, some on swings, all of them taking part in the great Aussie outdoor life. We stood on the harbour wall watching them. It turned out to be one of those defining moments in your life. We had no children of our own at the time, but I could see what opportunities Australia offered for any that might come along. It made my stomach churn thinking about it because I knew then that we'd have to consider living here and I didn't want to face having to make difficult decisions. I envied the Australians who had the best of both; all of this and their friends and family close by. I still envy them. I tell them at every opportunity.

Four years later, here we are, this time with a child who is growing up with the great outdoors. We're just pretending to be residents, but Ella doesn't know that, she thinks this is for real. She's learning how to be an Australian, she climbs, balances, runs, hops and swims. She licks sand, drinks salty sea water, pats dogs, dances in fountains and climbs the wrong way up slides. At night, before she goes to bed, she looks at a book of Australian wildlife and points out "platypus", "wombat" and "dingo dogs", which, she adds, "might bite". She hears kookaburras in the trees and tries to make the same noises. She lives in a world where daddy has time to do finger painting and play fuzzy felts and mummy has time (and inclination) to slice mangoes.

We were so sure that a year in Australia would "cure" the need to live here permanently, that it would begin to irritate us (and some things do; think cockroaches, humidity and lack of decent french cheese). Perhaps it's the honeymoon period or the fact I'm not working, but we are surprised how quickly it's felt like home. If only we had the people we love.

Earlier in the week, when I was driving her home from nursery, we stopped at some traffic lights. "Happy", she said suddenly. She's never used that word before. "Ella happy?" I replied, looking in the rear view mirror. "Mummy happy. Ella happy". She's right, we are happy.

I couldn't get it out of my head, so when I was drying her off after her bath I looked right at her and said "Sydney or England?". She laughed and said "Sydney", slowly and deliberately. Of course, she has no idea what I meant, but I told Darren about it later. "Perhaps we should let Ella decide" I offered. "she can make a random, whimsical decision that affects the rest of our lives. If it turns out wrong, we can hold it against her in our old age".

He laughed. Daddy or Chips? Daddy or Chips? A tough decision.

Makeover for Skippy

Before and after.

The Witching Hours

There are some days I look at my watch more often than others. Today was one of them.

Darren is working evenings this week, which means he starts at 4.30pm and we eat our main meal at lunchtime. It's a bit limiting because you always have to be home for 4pm, but it beats the shift patterns in the UK, where time as a family is limited to a couple of days a month. There are huge quality of life issues for trainee consultants in the UK. Not so here in Australia. The consultants here are contracted to work 70 days per year in the public healthcare system. That pays the bills, and after that they are free to do private work, which brings in serious amounts of money, enough money to be more than very comfortable. Information like that doesn't help when you are thinking of reasons to stay in the UK.

We had a plan to go down to Watson's Bay today and eat fish and chips from Doyle's on the jetty for lunch in the style of a family from the Boden catalogue. If you've never seen the Boden catalogue, think chinos, wayfarers, linen skirts and sweaters draped casually over the shoulder.

I might have known it wouldn't turn out. People like us don't belong in the Boden catalogue, we belong in Marks and Spencers, near the socks.

Ella had fallen asleep by the time we'd got to Bondi Junction. We kept her asleep by running the engine after we arrived at Watson's Bay, which meant the fish and chips were eaten in the car with a charming view of the back end of a Mercedes E class. They were good, but not as good as the flake/shark I'd had freshly-cooked by the fishmonger in Bondi, so I'm left eating my words alongside the chips.

After Ella woke up we sat on the beach for an hour, listening to the clinking of wine glasses from Doyle's restaurant. She'd had half an hour's sleep, despite our best efforts.

"I could murder a lovely glass of wine and a snooze on the beach" I said

"So could I"

Of course, with a toddler, there's no chance. You have to build sandcastles and make footprints and look for shells, even if you're tired because she wakes you up at 6.20 every morning. Very often, the only way we achieve this is through plentiful cups of good, dark coffee to keep us alert.

By the time we got home, it was witching hour; that time in the afternoon that's neither here nor there, when kids are getting ratty and you've run out of ideas to entertain them in the hours until bedtime. After Darren went to work we walked into Randwick to hire a DVD (Prescilla Queen of the Desert - for some Aussie culture) and stopped off for a take-out coffee at Gloria Jean's on the way to the park, where I met a friend of Yvonne's. She looked equally bleary-eyed but didn't have the coffee to hold her up.

"Adelaide only slept for an hour this afternoon" she said of her three year old. "I'm dead on my feet, she usually sleeps for two".

"What, always?" I asked.

"Well, unless she's going through a growth spurt, in which case she might sleep for three. She's unbearable if she gets less than two hours, the witching hour starts at 4pm"

"Welcome to my world" I replied.

I made pasta bolognaise for her tea. She ate it with such urgency that I had to strip her off in the highchair and carry her at arm's length into a waiting bath when she'd finished. There was just enough time to get on my hands and knees to clear up the mess underneath the table before it was time to pull the plug, which revealed an orange tide mark all around the tub.

Another day when bedtime and ibuprofen can't come soon enough.

England vs Australia Part V

Scores level again

So Where the Bloody Hell are You?

You might recognise this sheila, she's been fronting an ad campaign for Tourism Australia with the tagline "So where the bloody hell are you?". Frankly, this blog is drawing so many holiday enquiries that the tourist board ought to be paying me outright. Two more e-mails today, both making arrangements to visit. Better get working on the tan.

I read in the paper today that the billboard ads have been banned in the UK because they've been causing offence. Here's the Sydney Daily Telegraph's take on the matter:

Headline: "Tourism campaign ends up in dunny"

"Australia is about to unleash its secret weapon against those delicate Brits offended by the "Where the bloody hell are you?" tourism campaign.

Tourism minister Fran Bailey said yesterday she would dispatch larrikin Aussie toilet plumber Kenny - actor Shane Jacobson - to the UK with orders to sort out the Poms' offended sensibilities.

Following a small number of complaints from the British public, the UK Advertising Standards Authority ordered the Australian government to withdraw the use of the words "bloody hell" because they were deemed offensive. There were just 32 complaints about billboards in London, Glasgow and Birmingham.

"They've had 32 complaints out of a population of 60 million about a billboard - who can take that seriously?" Ms Bailey said. "Kenny is our secret weapon against these 32 people".

Jacobson - star of hit Aussie film Kenny - said it was time for the UK to get over it.

"It's a bit bloody rough, isn't it?" he said. "I'm going over there to find out where the bloody hell they are".

nb Dunny - "toilet"
Larrikin - "Australian folk tradition of irreverence, mockery of authority and
disregard for rigid norms of proprietry"

Balconry

According to the Lonely Planet's "Best of Sydney", the backstreets of Balmain are "impossibly photogenic". I had planned to take some photos of the "million dollar cottages covered with frangipanis" promised by the book, but instead spent lots of time trying to get out of the rain.

You'll have to make do with these shots, including one of some balconry, which may not be an actual word, but sounds enough like "falconry" for me to pass it off as one. See what I mean about Australia looking exactly like you think it would?

Next time we go to Paddington, I'll show you million-dollar houses (and more paths and walkways). Bet you can't sleep with the anticipation.

Paths

I've developed a new obsession to add to planespotting and bridges. It's paths, or more specifically, "ornate tiled verandahs and other walkways", which seems a good title for a book.

This isn't as mad as it sounds. Here are two of the lovely paths I spotted in Balmain today. I even stopped to discuss them with one of the locals, who told me they are increasingly being covered with decking or ripped up altogether.

We had a 1930's tiled floor in our hallway at home but it wasn't nearly as nice as these. The previous owners had fitted a gas pipe right across the surface, breaking all the tiles irrepairably. We looked at fitting a floor like this in its place when we renovated the house. The cost would have been somewhere in the region of £4,500, which we couldn't afford. We fitted quarry tiles instead.

It breaks my heart to think people are throwing away their history.

Succumbed

Like the great Ocsar Wilde, I can resist anything but temptation, especially when it comes in the shape of a chocolate brownie on a rainy afternoon. This was what Steve Irwin would have called a "beaut" if he'd lived to taste it. Damn that stingray.

(For the real foodies, this amounts to food porn. I know you will click to enlarge this shot, so I will add that the bottom bit was warm and there were chunks of Belgian chocolate on the top, which I had already scoffed).

For the record, the Circle Cafe in Balmain Uniting Church is an absolute gem of a find, hidden from the road behind some trees, a faint aroma of good coffee and hum of civilised chatter. We could almost have been in Europe, not just because of the relentless drizzle outside but because the place has such a cosy, worn feel about it, with two fireplaces and lots of nooks and crannies.

It also has copies Australian Women's Weekly, so Darren was happy.

When we find places like this I could kick myself at having fallen into some of Sydney's worst tourist traps while on holiday here in the past. We should have been eating brownies in Balmain, not wandering through fake sandstone cave drawings under the AMP tower. What were we thinking?

Populate or Perish

Australia is apparently facing a population crisis. I saw it on the telly. If you have a shortage skill and look good in a swimming cap, this is excellent news.

Balmain, however, has a bohemian, tree-hugging kind of feel. They don't care about any population crisis here. Where else could you spot this sort of graffiti on the back of a toilet door?

Tree-hugging is all very well, but who'll fund their retirement pensions?

Balmain

We had a stroll around Balmain this afternoon, which is one of the suburbs in Sydney's trendy inner west. It's a pleasant place to while away an afternoon, though I wouldn't recommend the rainy afternoon stroll we took today, especially not if you've recently coloured your hair and/or haven't brought a coat.

The main road through Balmain is called Darling Street. It's full of little boutique shops, the sort I'd never go into because I can't afford to pay for whatever I (inevitably) break. This is the front door step of one such boutique, which is probably much more interesting than anything they have on sale inside. Never trust a shop that turns the price tags around in the front window.

Accosted

Left the gym at 9.30am with wet hair and was accosted by some earnest-looking ladies representing Amnesty International. They've been hanging about the high street for the last few days but I've managed to avoid them until now. I'm far too busy sorting out my papayas from my paw-paws to sign petitions.

"Will you support us in fighting violence against women?"

"Sorry, I'm busy" (puts on best "harrassed mother" look despite obvious lack of child and presence of sweaty gym kit in bag).

"So you would condone violence against women?".

She was getting shirty now. This irritates me beyond belief, in the same way as people collecting for charity shaking boxes in your face asking "care to to help save orphaned children and their fluffy kittens?". I just want to buy some milk and put the washer on, I don't want to hang about signing petitions.

"You know what?" I said. "Only if they've been really naughty". She looked at me in pure astonishment. I didn't hang around for her response, but I suspect she didn't see the funny side.

I told Darren about it later. He laughed. I realised my sense of humour has become darker over time. I blame it entirely on hanging out with medics. They have to see the dark side of life; they deal with death. It helps them through.

"The Aussies just don't get our humour" he said.

"Nobody does" I replied. "Take the Americans. They're so straight in comparison".

"I wonder what it is about us? Why is our humour so different from everyone else's?"

"I think it's pretty sophisticated. You need a bloody good sense of humour to put up with living in the UK".

England vs Australia Part IV

England 4 Australia 3

Shameless Tourist Shot Number 1

Oh come off it, you'd do the same.

Camp Cove

We took Ella to the ball pool this morning. Darren likes these places because he gets to read Australian Women's Weekly while I follow Ella up and down the climbing equipment. His knowledge of this season's must-have fashion accessories is second to none but he still resists combing his hair.

All this after a lie-in and a freshly-prepared fruit salad for his brekkie. He does a good impression of a lady who lunches.

The receptionist at the ball pool brings her three year old to work with her. "She must love it here?" I asked. "No, she's totally over it, but it beats paying for childcare" came the reply. The little girl has a mini-sofa under the desk. She crouches underneath playing with her dolls while her mum takes the $12 a time and opens the magnetic gate. She reminds me of a well-behaved dog in a basket. I feel sorry for her every time we visit.

After the ball pool we drove along Old South Head Road and got a parking spot at Camp Cove, which would be impossible at the weekend. I'd prepared a picnic of jambalaya and (another) fruit salad but Ella had fallen asleep so we had to eat it in the car, not quite what I'd had in mind as tour leader, but better than waking her up.

Camp Cove is a harbour beach just around the rock from Watson's Bay. It's one of the first beaches you would see if you sailed through the heads into Sydney Harbour and it turns out to be a gorgeous cresent of golden-coloured sand that looks exactly like the top of an apple crumble. It doesn't say that in the Lonely Planet, but as they welcome readers' reports, I'm going to write in and suggest it.

The sea is green and clear, there's snorkelling on the rocks at one end and a small cafe at the other serving fresh juices, smoothies and various muffins and breads, all of which call out to me (though I resist). The lady in the cafe was hunched over the property pages of the Southern Courier when I walked up to the counter. "Moving house?" I asked. "No, just dreaming about how the other half live" she replied. "My other life is in the north of England", I said. "I can tell you that the view you have right here is exactly how the other half live". She smiled in recognition. It wasn't hard to spot the irony.

Freight

We took the bus into the city today. We don't really know a good place to park, and as Ella was at nursery, the bus was a more attractive option.

We got off just outside the Museum of Sydney. The museum is showing an exhibition called "Bridging Sydney", I have a leaflet about it that I picked up in the library, which has been blu-tacked to the wall at home for seven weeks. It seemed rude not to go in, it finishes next month.

The exhibition about the bridge was worth the $10 entrance fee alone, but there was plenty more you could fill a day with. The museum charts the settlement of the city since 1788. We are learning about Sydney bit by bit. It's really getting under our skin, we're growing to love it.

The history of the place is fascinating. As Yvonne remarked to me last week, "Most Aussies have no idea how hard the first few years were and how close we came to failure". I perched on a bench in the foyer, eavesdropping on a history lesson being delivered to a group of 11 year olds by a curator.

"You see, Sydney is really hilly, and it's built on sandstone", she began. "The topsoil is very thin. So when the British came and tried to plant crops to feed themselves, the heavy rains came along and washed the soil away, leaving nothing but sandstone behind. These British didn't once think to ask the aborigines, the indiginous people, what they could grow or what they could eat. Pretty soon they were starving to death, and when they sent The Sirius (a ship) to get food from South Africa, it was shipwrecked. How's that for history?".

Behind her was a model of the first ships to arrive in Sydney Cove in January 1788, along with a list of what was on board. The list included "puppies, shoe-leather, ladies underwear (800 pairs), oak trees, apple trees, glassware, bedlinen, bowls, pick-axes, bricks, shovels, two stallions and 88 sheep".

I thought about our airfreight and smiled. "A stapler, post-it notes, scissors, baby nail clippers, tape measure, handbags, shoes, moleskin jacket (1), tea towels (5), photocopies of recipes from Jamie Oliver's cookbook, a patchwork quilt, pillowcases, placemats, and a pack of cards depicting scenes of Kefalonia".

The settlement of a British colony here is much more of an achievement than you can imagine.

Trailblockers

We went into Trailfinders today to book the return portion of our flights for next year. The tickets we have say that we are returning on August 1st 2007, so we needed to make the alteration.

The receptionist at Trailfinders shook her head and said they would be unable to make the changes. The customer service advisor agreed and sent us to the Qantas office on Bridge Street.

The lady in the Qantas office spoke exactly like Dame Edna. It was hard not to comment on it.

"Okay, so you guys want to go home when?"

"Around about January 28th"

"You know your tickets run out on January 16th? You must be back in London by that date"

Stunned silence. The guy in Trailfinders back home had told us that (1) we could extend the dates on the tickets for an admin fee of about £50 and that (2) as the tickets stood, we had to be out of Australia by Jan 16th but could arrive back in the UK whenever we chose.

"What are our options?"

"You would have to buy new tickets, but that's our busiest time. We are talking megabucks"

"Right. So we need to get back to London by the 16th. Okay, can we stopover in Singapore?"

"Your tickets are routed through Bangkok. I can get you tickets through Singapore but that's an extra $200 per person"

"Okay, let's do that"

She tapped away at the computer and chewed her lip for a while. "Hmm. Guys, I can't get you out of Sydney on any of these dates. The flights are full already".

"Shit"

More stunned silence. It was touch and go that we could return to the UK on our existing tickets before they ran out.

"Can you leave earlier? I can get you out the first week in January"

"No, We have work commitments until January 21st"

More chewing of the lips. "Okay, you can go from Melbourne on January 14th, that's direct to Heathrow. We can fly you down to Melbourne, you can check your luggage right through".

She passed the itinerary across the desk. Melbourne - Heathrow. Qantas 747-400. Arrives January 15th.
24 hours 21 minutes.

I put my head in my hands and looked at Darren. "Twenty four hours on a plane. With Ella".

"She could go by ship?" he suggested.

We booked the flights. "That will be $600 for the change in routing. How would you like to pay?".

England vs Australia Part III

Scores Level

England vs Australia Part II

England 2 Australia 0

England vs Australia Part I

England 1 Australia 0

Par Avion

We received our first air mail letter today. It was from my old french teacher, who's been reading this blog and has spotted some grammatical errors. Thirty-four years old and I'm still getting red pen all over my work. "Sarah is a very bright girl but she must learn to apply herself".

I thought air mail paper was obsolete in the age of electronic communication so I'm pleased to see it's not. This particular letter was all the more pleasing because it wasn't separate writing paper and envelope, it was one of those all-in-one jobs that leaves you just enough space to rattle off everything you want to say provided you keep your handwriting small. I love them, they remind me of the past, they remind me of airports and those old-fashioned arrivals and departure boards where the letters used to flip over to reveal exciting far-off places like Singapore and Tokyo and Sydney. Places I used to dream I'd see.

When I was a little girl, my great-grandmother, Frances, used to write to me on airmail paper. She was a "ten pound pom", a Yorkshire woman who had emigrated to New Zealand in the days of "populate or perish". Such was her dislike of my great-grandfather that she had boarded the ship without telling him and threw her wedding ring over the side before they were out of Southampton Water.

Eventually she came into Australia and later settled in Perth after her son had emigrated out here with his wife and kids. She used to send me an Aussie dollar and a cotton handkerchief with a map of Australia every year for my birthday.

Frances lived into her nineties but I never met her. We first came to Australia just eighteen months after she died. I missed her by a whisker but amazingly, we met a man in a bar in Perth who remembered her. "Ah yes, that bird woman. The bird woman of Perth they called her". It turns out she was mad as a bike and used to spend her days sitting outside the Post Office on Forrest Place feeding her feathered friends. "She was in all the papers, used to get onto buses blowing whistles and ordering everyone to get off. Total crackpot". When I asked my great uncle, he produced an enormous black and white photo of his mother sitting on a bench with a seagull on her head. "That's her. This photo was in the local paper so we ordered her a copy. It was with her things when she died. Take it back to England, you can keep it". I'll frame it one day. In the meantime, we gave Ella "Frances" as one of her middle names in the hope that she'll grow up to be as brave and as barmy as her great-great grandmother. Lucky kid.

Hatching Chooks

Ella's nursery is hatching some eggs for Easter. There are eight of them in an incubator in the dining room. It's $5 per child.

"So do they get their own egg for their $5?" I asked when I collected her this evening.

"Oh no, it's just a donation of $5 per child to cover the costs. They should be hatching over the next couple of days, then we have them for two weeks".

"Don't they, erm, look for their mothers when they hatch?"

"Not at all. I don't think chickens are very maternal. Anyhow, the kids love it. We've been doing it for years with only one little hiccup when a child sort of throttled one of them, but we watch them carefully when they are handling the chicks".

I peered into the incubator at the little eggs, which thus far show no sign of tapping their shells and breaking out. I have no idea whether they would get away with this in British nurseries. Putting aside the throttling incident, I can't decide whether I object to it or not and I'm trying not to think about what happens to the chicks when they go back wherever they came from. The Aussies like their chooks. There are three spit-roasts along Randwick high street alone.

Ella was about to eat afternoon tea when I arrived to collect her. There were two birthdays today so the kids had all pitched in to make marble cake, which was the most alarming shade of blue and pink I've ever seen on a plate. I sat on the edge of the sandpit watching Ella stuff a fistful into her mouth until she could no longer get enough lip seal to chew it. The word "cakehole" came immediately to mind. She eats cake with such gusto you'd think she'd never been fed.

With the little one at nursery, we had lunch in Coogee today. The correct pronunciation for Coogee is "cud-gee", not "Coo-gee" as you might have thought, though the locals refer to it simply as "Cudge". I've started calling it Cudge too. The Aussies are very laid back and it's beginning to rub off such that I can't be bothered to finish my words properly.

It's tricky knowing how to pronounce some of the place names. I find it's better to wait until you hear it spoken on the radio, which is why I listen to the traffic news. For example, Kogarah is pronounced "Cog-ruh" and Vaucluse is "Vor-Clews". I've started saying "Cron-alla" for Cronulla. This may be the beginning of an accent. Must keep that in check.

After lunch, we set off on foot around the clifftop towards Gordon's Bay. The clifftop walk stretches from Bondi down to Coogee and we plan to do the lot once the weather properly cools down. At the south end of Coogee beach we noticed a neatly-kept shrine against the picket fence.

"Looks like somebody threw themselves off the cliff" said Darren.

Closer inspection revealed a shrine to the Virgin Mary, who has apparently been appearing on the clifftop every other Saturday since the beginning of 2003. There were newspaper clippings sellotaped to the picket fence reporting on the sightings, along with a photo of one of the supposed appearances and a number of hand-typed testaments from various ladies and gentlemen of the cloth, all of whom claim to have seen the image on the cliff.

"January 2003" I said. "Three months after the Bali bombings".

The Bali bombing claimed 88 Australian lives in October 2002. Most of the people who were killed were in their twenties and thirties. Twenty of the dead were from the eastern suburbs, including half of the Coogee amateur rugby league team. Their photos feature on a memorial on the clifftop and there's a sad sculpture a bit further up the hill.

Is there a link between the two? The cynic in me would say perhaps the "sightings" have been a source of comfort to the bereaved. The mind can play funny tricks. On the other hand, perhaps it's for real. We couldn't explain the photo or all of the eyewitness accounts, but it does make you wonder how come it's only those with really serious, deep faith who manage to see things like this.

Bizarrely, the local launderette has become a place of pilgramage to the holy shrine, as this is where the first person to sight the image was standing at the time. Since then, 4000 "Mary Medals" have been given away to those who've seen the image but the owner of the launderette now refuses to be drawn on the subject because he's received hate mail.

You couldn't write it, could you?

Join the Club

You know it's Sunday when there's Bisto powder all over the worktops. Except it's not Bisto, it's "Gravox", which sounds like something you'd clean the floor with. That's about all it's fit for; it's tasteless.

This time next week I'll have a box of Bisto. Until then, we'll soldier on. It's like Tenko without the ceiling fans.

It rained today, just as we were coming back from the supermarket, having promised Ella we'd go to the park at Maroubra on the way home. We drove straight past instead and by the time we were home she'd fallen asleep. This happens quite a lot. It happened once just as I arrived at Sainsbury's in Warrington so I parked up at the garage and bought a magazine. She slept for an hour and ten minutes, which tested "OK" to it's very limit. I always swore I wouldn't drive around in my car to persuade a child to sleep. I still haven't, but we've made plenty of detours to prevent her from waking up.

This afternoon we went out to join the local RSL club, which, to give you some perspective, is like signing up at the British Legion. Except the RSL has a 25 metre indoor pool, a gym, terrace, tennis courts and a bistro which serves a carvery roast twice a week (for $10 each on a wednesday, which is about £4). The thing that's really missing in our lives is the opportunity to meet the local aussies. I meet other mums, Darren meets lots of British hospital staff. None of this is really giving us much insight into the Australian psyche. I want to talk to the locals, I want to learn how they think.

We turned up at the RSL with our swimming bags, but we'd hit on pretty much the only time in the week the pool is closed. We had a look about the building instead. It was like Penketh labour club on speed; a betting area, a room of "pokies" (betting machines), a function room (which promises "turns" on a Saturday night), and the bistro with today's "all you can eat carvery". A few locals were in. I counted three perms. It's a grand old place. It will be an education.

Knickers

I need some new knickers. There's no Marks and Spencers. This has been playing on my mind all day.

I came up with a plan to ask each of my girlfriends to buy and send me a single pair of knickers. This would not cost too much, I thought. It might amass a dozen pairs of knickers and would also sort the wheat from the chaff (if you'll pardon the expression) as I'd find out who'd send me a pair from Marks and which cheapskates would try to pass off something from BHS.

The problem with this scheme is that our letterbox is miles away from the flat. It only fits thin letters; everything else goes back to the post-office for collection, so a dozen pairs of knickers equals a dozen trips to the queue at the counter.

And then I remembered the time one of my friends roped me into a chain-letter involving the purchase of a pair of knickers for somebody else. The system was supposed to get you fourteen pairs of knickers but I came off badly because I only received one. I'd been scammed. The problem was, the pair I did receive came from my friend's mother. They were hideous. After that, every time I saw her, I saw the sort of knickers she was wearing.

For all your sakes, I'll go to K-Mart

Black Forest

We remarked today that Australia is now properly imprinted into our brains. When we first arrived, we noticed all of the differences; the road signs and markings, the architecture, the registration plates on the cars. Two months in, we've stopped registering this. Our brains think this is home.

This is the Cadbury's Black Forest Dairy Milk. I suspect the addition of cherries and bits of dark biscuit is to disguise the taste of the stuff they are passing off as chocolate. The trouble is, the boundaries between Australia and home have become blurred in our minds and I can't remember whether you can buy this stuff back in the UK.

Anyway, I'll begrudgingly admit that it's really rather nice. If you need chocolate in Australia, this is the very fella you've been looking for.

Bluebottles

"How do the lifeguards know where to put the two yellow and red flags for safe swimming?"

"I don't think there's any science behind it"

"Oh there must be some complicated science about the undercurrent and the strength of the wind. Tim would know. Tim's very clever".

I always resort to the "Tim would know" card when I can't get an adequate answer from Darren. Tim went to a grammar school because he lived in Buckinghamshire. We lived in Cheshire so were condemned to the comprehensive system. Tim knows lots of history and answers to questions. We know sod all.

I asked the lifeguard on duty at Manly beach. "How do you know where to put the flags?"

"Oh we just know" came the reply. I think Darren might have been right.

It was particularly busy down at Manly today, a lovely Saturday afternoon with an eclectic mix of people hanging about the beach and the corso. I like Manly but it's full of Brits. It's where they all go to live when they emigrate to Sydney, so every second accent you hear is a pommie one. If I had wanted to hear pommie accents, I'd have stayed in the UK.

"Watch your little one" said the lifeguard before he walked away. "The bluebottles are really starting to wash in now with the change of tide. We're getting reports of lots of them out back". By "out back" he meant at the back of the group of people swimming between the flags. He took his loudhaler and bellowed a warning to them. The corso was full of tearful kids with ice-packs held against their legs. Beautiful ocean. Dodgy residents.

The Gentleman's Game

As an aside, I can't believe that the cricket world cup is still taking place given that the Pakistan coach was murdered.

If you haven't followed the story, Bob Woollmer, former English test cricketer, was found dead in his hotel room after Pakiston lost to Ireland (not a nation famed for their cricket team). Suicide was initially suspected, but today it has been confirmed that he was strangled.

Disgraceful. They should call it off.

Park Your Bum

The parks in Sydney are pretty good, particularly the enclosed ones, with sunshades and coffee shops. I thought they deserved a picture. Nothing more to do than to park your bum, really.

This is Lyne Park at Rose Bay earlier this afternoon. There were two other kids in the park when we got there. Both of them had enjoyed an afternoon nap. I know because I heard their mothers boasting. So what? My daughter can count to fifteen.

Nap Shnap.

Watson's Bay

This is the view from the waterfront at Watson's Bay. It's a line shot down the middle to the city, though a shame the hills get in the way of the bridge and opera house. If this was America, they'd have bulldozed those hills by now. Watson's Bay is now officially my favorite place in Sydney. We had our picnic under a tree, having brushed the fruit bat droppings off the table.

"Even better than Bennelong Point?" asked Darren.

There's no competition. Watson's Bay seems to have it all; clear, calm water, clean sand, great views, a park, free parking, picnic tables, a fish and chip restaurant (Doyles, right on the beach, see the other picture) and a smaller take-away version of Doyles on the jetty. It also has an enormous beer garden right on the water. It wouldn't be out of place on a little greek island.

People actually live here. They catch the jetcat down the harbour to get to work. It's a bit different from the M6. You can see the attraction.

The Terrible Twos

And for my next trick, I shall be refusing to sleep, crayoning on the table and demanding ice cream.

In the queue at the post office, my mum threatens me with registered post. I don't know what she means.

I want ice cream, I want beach, I want go park, I want go swimming pool. I no want go sleep.

The Gap

We set out early this morning. Ella woke up at 6am with a bit of a cold, but not enough of a cold to deter her from wanting to bounce on our bed ten minutes later. A toddler bouncing on your bed at 6am is one thing, but their using your body to heave themselves about is enough to persuade you to get up. Ella has two specialities; elbowlarynxus (elbow in the voice box) and nipplehandleius (using any available nipple for leverage). Neither are pleasant. We put the kettle on.

I am proud (and patriotic, in an Aussie way) to report that I was preparing a picnic at 7.45am. This included a tupperware box of (badly) sliced mango and (frankly butchered) paw paw, which I've never tasted before. I wanted a papaya and picked up the wrong thing in the fruit and veg shop, so paw paw it was.

As I'm not working, I've nominated myself as "Tour Leader" as well as chief cook and navigator for the next twelve months. Darren doesn't seem to mind. As is usual, he earns the money, I spend it. That's what I call an equal partnership.

This new-found role is an absolute dream; I get the map, I do some research, I book some flights. I can barely sleep with the excitement of it all.

As tour leader, I've joined the library and borrowed some books about Sydney harbour. Much of the area around the water is designated national parkland so it's free to visit, largely free to park, and the views are spectacular. We headed off to see "the gap" this morning, which is the gap between the north and south headlands at the entrance to the harbour (Port Jackson). You can see it in the right hand part of the map, near the compass.

We are living on the south side of the harbour, across the water from Manly, so we were standing on the south head. It's a stunning place, the sea licks the bottom of the rocks menacingly, the water is turquoise. The photo is worth a click just for the rock formations. For many years access was restricted to the Australian Royal Navy, but it was opened to the public in 1982. What a stunning sight it would be to sail into Sydney through the heads, past Watson's Bay and towards the city. Now that's the way to see Sydney for the first time.

Something Fishy

This is a Mekong Catfish. It's an ugly bugger. I would never eat it, not just because of the way it looks but because it hangs about with raw sewage in the Mekong river delta, Vietnam. At least, that's what Google says.

Except that in Australia it's marketed as "Basa", which sounds a bit more acceptable, a bit like "Sea Bass". Basa has been recommended to me many times by budget-concious Sydneysiders when I've expressed surprise at the price of fish (and bread, which is extortionately expensive). So I bought some from Coles and we had it for tea, not knowing it has previous form. Will I never take my own advice not to eat a fish you haven't seen whole?

For the record, it was a bit rubbery. I can't bring myself to discuss it any further, except to say that Jamie Oliver never intended "tray baked cod with runner beans and pancetta" to contain Mekong Catfish in place of cod, I don't care how cheap it is.

Childless

I went over to see Sally Dawson this afternoon. Seamus had the day off work; he showed me into their garage and asked me if there was anything we needed, which there wasn't. "Oh sure you must have use for this lovely towel rail? Sally bought it, I've no idea why, you have more room than we do". Turns out Sally buys all manner of "fecking stuff" that Seamus has no use for. I relieved him of a chest of drawers, just to be sociable. He carried it over to the car, making a space next to it in the boot so he could continue to pursuade me that I had room to take the fecking towel rail. I left without it.

Niamh was at home today. Sally doesn't work Thursdays. Come to think of it, neither do I, though Ella was happily tucked away at nursery. It was almost like being childless again, visiting friends who have kids and leaving unaccompanied. I remarked on this, which set Sally off into dreaming aloud about her life before having Niamh, worldwide travel, lazing on beaches in Fiji, breakfasting in San Francisco. "I hear so many people who insist their life is better now they have kids" she said. "Actually, life with kids is great, but then again, life without them is pretty sweet too. Nobody ever admits that". I thought about it afterwards. She's right, of course, but on balance, I don't think I'd have it any other way.

Niamh woke from her afternoon nap just as I was about to leave. She'd put her hand into her nappy and smeared poo all over her bedsheets. I left Sally bathing her and Seamus changing the bed. I see her point about the breakfast in San Francisco.

Mini Eggs

This morning we joined Yvonne and Cate at what they call "the ball pool". I'd call it a "soft play cafe". There are loads of these at home, but having such marvellous weather, Sydney doesn't have many options to entertain the kids when it's raining.

Not that it was raining today. No, it was the usual twenty-something degees and far too sticky, though Darren appears to have acclimatised because he moved the fan to my side of the bed last night, complaining it's making him chilly. He won't let me have the air-con switched on overnight. I'm sure the heat is attracting the roaches.

There are two soft play cafes in the whole of the city, to my knowledge. One of them is at Fox Studios and it costs $17 to get in. Apparently it's booked out on a rainy day and you have to put your name down for it first thing in the morning. The one at Marrickville is less well known, and the mums who go there like to keep it that way. Having been invited along, I've been sworn not to tell anyone else about it, which means I've immediately told Niamh Dawson's mum it's precise location. That's what sisterhood is about.

Ella loves the ball pool, it has four slides, two bouncy castles (one of which I've tried out when the staff weren't looking) and a machine that throws balls up into the air for the kids to catch. You have to be pretty agile to keep up with Ella as she still needs help to get up and down the different levels. Having been to the gym for two consecutive days, my abdominal muscles were aching, so dropping through holes and hauling myself here and there made me wince. Once she was up onto the second level I could finally get a coffee and have a chat with Cate and Yvonne.

Twelve months after arriving from the UK, Cate is still finding it hard to make friends with Aussie mums. Yvonne is the only one she's found easy to get to know, and Yvonne isn't a Sydneysider, she's from Brisbane. "I met a girl at playgroup, she said she also had the same trouble, but she turned out to be the kid's nanny, not her mum" said Cate. "I've invited her here today but I don't know whether she'll turn up, with us being, you know, older mums". I looked straight at Cate but couldn't work out whether she was including me in that. She's seven years older than I am. I'm choosing to ignore it.

Yvonne, it turns out, is a whizz with Australian history. She has loads of books on the subject and says I can borrow them any time I like, which I'm chuffed to bits with. She's also recommended some of the museums downtown, which saves me trawling through the more boring ones. I could have chatted to her for ages but Ella fell into somebody else's vomit on the trampoline so we had to go home.

This afternoon we had to collect a parcel from the post office. The post office in Randwick is upstairs in the shopping mall. It shares many characteristics with post offices back home; the queues are very long, they move very slowly, and the person in front of you always wants to do some complicated and time-consuming transaction when you just want to buy a stamp or post a parcel. If I were prime minister, the first new legislation to be passed would be a smart card to enable fast, efficient people to bypass post office queues. This is a good enough reason for me not to go into politics. I'm one of Thatcher's children. We make Mussolini look like a moderate.

Anyway, the parcel was from my mother-in-law. It was the point and shoot digital camera we forgot to bring. I read the customs note on the back of the parcel, which said "Contents: Camera, Sweets". Suspecting Cadbury's, I ripped the whole box open as soon as we left the shop. Inside were two packages of mini-eggs. So there I was, standing outside the post office, bits of cardboard and bubble-wrap and sellotape all over the place. I put the packaging into the nearest bin and stuffed the mini-eggs into the hood of Ella's pram while quickly calculating that I'd have to own up to having received them. This would mean saving half for Darren but giving none to Ella, who might feasibly choke on them. Afterwards, I went to Coles and bought her a Milky Way to appease my guilt.

Bad, bad mummy. Delicious eggs. Thanks Kate.

Comments

Just a quickie asking people leaving comments not to include personal information. One monkey, who shall remain nameless, has posted a comment which includes my surname. I'm now completely traceable so I've had to switch settings and hide all of your comments from the blog because I don't know how to delete the comment that was left, if you follow.

I can still read the comments, so please post.

If I work out how to get rid of it, I'll switch the setting back.

The Pom Shop

I know a pom called Cate. She told me about The Pom Shop at Bondi Junction. It's not really called The Pom Shop, it's called "A Taste of Home", but everyone calls it The Pom Shop. I think they should change the name.

Cate says that The Pom shop stocks proper Dairy Milk. That's enough for me, so today I took myself down there to investigate.

We've noticed little sections of British food in Coles supermarket, especially the one at Bondi Junction, which funnily enough is just round the corner from The Pom Shop. Coles clearly think there's a market for this sort of thing, but the things they stock in this section are odd. I went in there today with my notepad especially to report back, which, as you can imagine, attracted a few funny looks from the staff.

The British section in Coles is currently stocking:

Walkers Oat Cakes
Rocky biscuit bars
Marmite
Silver Shred marmalade
Hartley's jam
Lyle's golden syrup
PG Tips
Paxo Stuffing (with a special promotional sticker encouraging "go on, try it!")
Colman's mustard
Processed peas
Bachelor's mushy peas
Hellman's mayonnaise
Robinson's lemon barley water
Homepride tinned curry sauce
Heinz steamed sticky toffee pudding

Having gathered this information I went round to The Pom Shop to speak to the owner, Andrew. Actually, he wasn't the owner, he was the owner's best mate. He'd been given the opportunity to own half the business but thought it was a mad idea so didn't give up his day job. Now he's working for his mate, who I presume is mucking about on the harbour in a boat. I wrote it all down in my notebook so felt I owed him an explanation about the blog.

It's a small shop with no air conditioning, yet has a whole wall of chocolate, most of it Cadbury's. I stood in front of it all, looking. It was like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. "Is this real Cadbury's, from the UK?". "Oh yes" he replied, realising that this is an issue to be taken seriously. "It's the real stuff. We ship it here in containers".

"How come it doesn't melt?" I asked. "It's really hot in here".

"The turn-around on that shelf is three days" replied Andrew. What he means is, he re-stocks the entire wall of chocolate every three days. A pommie girl came in while we were talking and made off with three creme eggs and a packet of Quavers. He should have given up the day job. A small box of Weetabix costs $12 (£5)

There was a map of the UK on the wall. Visitors to the shop have placed a circle on where they come from. The West Country is under-represented, but not the north west. The north west part of the map is full of little circles. We have higher standards there.

"So where are you from originally?" I asked.

"Oh you wouldn't know it, it's a small place"

"What's it called?"

"Widnes"

Summer is Coming

I hear it's getting warmer and lighter in the UK. When you put your clocks forward next Sunday, we'll be putting ours back an hour and the time difference will change from eleven hours to nine. The summer is coming.

The Aussies, on the otherhand, are convinced that England never gets any sun. They honestly think this is why we can't play cricket. Actually they might have a point.

I heard an advert for a travel agent on the radio this morning. "Out of Suncream? Go to England. No sun, lots of history". Does that really sum us up?

Planespotting

We had breakfast in the cafe at Brighton Beach yesterday morning. Unlike its namesake, Brighton NSW boasts a cracking view across the ugly industry on the banks of Botany Bay. It also has a cracking view of the airport runway. The bacon butty was just a ruse to go planespotting.

I've noticed recently how being so far from home breaks down the usual inhibitions. It's not as though you are going to see anyone you know, and anyway, there are plenty of other oddbods in any big city, so you can be as mad as a bike and nobody cares. This leaves me free to indulge my darker side as a planespotter, or rather, as an admirer of Boeing 747 jumbos, especially Qantas ones. It's quite a specific hobby. You could say it's a niche market.

Here are a couple of shots I took with our zoom lense in between holding the short-wave radio to my ear and scanning for control tower broadcasts. Darren and Ella wandered off onto the beach, unable to cope with the shame of sitting next to such an anorak. This made me look as though I was alone, which probably looked twice as bad.

On the way back we spotted an even better vantage point, but there's no cafe. That's going to be a tough call.

Bridge Walk

I didn't stop smiling for ages after we walked over the bridge. As an admirer of bridges, I felt we'd been in the right place at the right time. This is the view we got when we turned around at the end of the walk.

There was a great atmosphere, lots of smiling and waving at helicopters and singing along to Aussie music, including Waltzing Matilda, Great Southern Land and Come on Aussie Come on. The latter is a cricket song, but I sang it anyway. What a great day.

Birthday Party

We took ourselves (and the cake) downtown on the train. It's only three stops from Bondi Junction, but the numbers I'd iced on the top were already half melted by the time we were on board.

A short ferry crossing later and we were on the north shore, where we sat on the wall and laid the cake on a plate for a birthday party. Here's Ella waving happy birthday to the bridge and her grubby little paws disposing of the last of the evidence.

Birthday Cake

This is the cake I promised to make for the coathanger's 75th birthday. Except I didn't actually bake it, I bought it from Coles, sliced it down the middle, filled it with raspberry jam and iced the top, but that's slack housewifery for you.

Anyway, it's the flattest sponge cake I've ever seen in a shop, so it looks exactly like anything I could have baked myself. Jane Asher, I am not.

Older Mums

The sandpit in the playground at Centennial Park is only party covered by the sunshade at midday. Surely that's a design fault. In any case, most of the children are playing elsewhere, it's the mothers who are huddled under the shade, trying to save what's left of their skin.

There are lots of "older mothers" in Sydney. I don't know whether it's a trend across Australia but it's noticable here. You are always on the verge of a faux pas by referring to a grandchild instead of a child. I heard today on the radio that the incidence of twin births in Australia has risen considerably in the last decade. They didn't say why (sloppy journalism, Paxman would be livid), but it must be down to older mothers and IVF.

I presume some of the older ones have climbed their career ladders and are now finding their posh heels can't grip the rungs when they're trying to balance a baby on one clicky hip. I wonder again what's the point of climbing the career ladder in the first place if you are eventually going to find jam on the important papers in your briefcase. Try explaining that one to a childless manager. They don't get it. It's always going to be a struggle after that.

Some of them make it look effortless. The younger mothers wear the exhaustion a bit better than the older ones. The older ones wear caps and glasses to hide the worst of the damage. My head isn't the right shape for a cap and in any case, I'm on the cusp of being an older mother, or at least, that's the story I'm buying.

I've finally bought new sunglasses, since we mislaid my lovingly-customised Oakleys. They do a much better job but the design makes me look and feel like Pauline Collins in the film Shirley Valentine. I even have a hat similar to hers. All I need now is for Tom Conti to kiss my stretch marks and bingo, I'm there. I'm Shirley.

Surprisingly, I love hanging out at the park. I talk to a few people but watch many more, particularly the so-called "helicopter parents" who hover around their kids, not really allowing them any space or room to breathe. Apparently there's a whole school of thought called "attachment parenting" which has some fans here in Sydney. It broadly requires the mother to remain physically attached to the child at all times. I'm not sure what's worse, attachment parenting or a Saga holidays cruise. I don't much fancy either.

I met a jewish woman called Tess in the sandpit yesterday. Tess was what I'd call an older mum. Less kind souls wuld have called her geriatric. She was from Johannesburg originally and regretted settling in Sydney because she felt Melbourne would have offered a better lifestyle. It's funny, you never hear anyone wishing they lived in Perth or Adelaide or Brisbane. It's as though those cities have no importance. "In Melbourne, in the Jewish community, everyone looks after you when you have a baby. People bake you cakes and do your housework and your ironing. It's old-fashioned, but it's how it should be, you need to get your strength back". She's right. Sydney reminds me of London, people pay other people to do the jobs their family would do if they weren't elsewhere. It's a city of people passing through.

Boomerangs

I took Ella to Lyne Park at Rose Bay today. The photo is a google image, not one of mine, though it marks exactly the spot I was sitting on the grass in quiet contemplation while Ella had her afternoon nap.

Rose Bay is on the harbour. You can catch a ferry into the city for a couple of dollars or travel by seaplane if you've got the money. It's a nice neighbourhood; we considered living there but felt we'd be out of place with the other residents, many of whom are Japanese, most of whom are wealthy. It would have been handy for getting into the city, but not for much else.

The reason I'd gone to Lyne Park was because there's a great (shaded) playground hiding in the trees you can see on the far right of the picture. However, Ella fell asleep literally as soon as I put her into the buggy, so I did a quick reccy of the waters edge and headed off for a coffee at the cafe across the grass.

By now you may be getting the impression that I see more than my fair share of the inside of coffee houses. You'd probably be right.

Exploring the city alone poses a few practical problems. For example, yesterday I met up with a friend of a friend in Centennial Park. I'd arranged to meet her in the cafe but as she was slightly late and Ella was jumping around in the fountain, it was almost impossible to queue up at the kiosk for a coffee whilst simulatneously keeping an eye on Ella.

(And while we're on the subject, it's also a very odd experience meeting someone you've never met before if you don't actually know what they look like, especially when it's sunny and everyone is wearing sunglasses. All I knew was that she would have two children with her and one of them would have blonde curly hair. In the event I returned the wave of three different women who were waving at somebody else, simply because I couldn't see their eyes so couldn't tell where they were looking. I felt so tragic when they walked straight past me).

The cafe in Lyne Park is up some wooden steps onto a platform raised just above the ground. I went round the other side looking for a ramp but there wasn't one, so I struggled up the steps with the buggy, trying not to wake Ella while a group of women in expensive sunglasses watched me with interest. Every one of them looked as though they might be married to a Greek shipping millionaire and none of them offered to help, nor did they move their chairs an inch so I could get past them. When I sat down they strained their necks to peer into the pushchair, so I swung it round to where they couldn't see, sat down, ordered my coffee and pulled up the Sydney Morning Herald. Thank goodness we didn't come to live here.

Afterwards I went to sit on the grass and watched the boats on the harbour, wondering what it would be like to emigrate. I'm not sure. Being here for a year feels "safe". It's like you're on a long stretchy piece of rope, like you're a boomerang. What if our "real" furniture was here? What if we had sold our cars and bought "proper" cars here in Australia? What if there was nowhere to go back to? We have no relatives in the UK with houses big enough to accomodate us if we wanted to visit. We probably wouldn't get back there much, for exactly that reason. Our parents would probably visit, we'd probably pay. But what about our friends? There were two women sitting next to me on the grass. They had three dogs between them and were having one of those meandering conversations that you don't really have on the phone. I miss that. I know people, but I don't know anyone I want to have a meandering conversation with.

After Ella woke up, it began to rain. We never made it to the playground, we got back into the car and went home. Sitting at the traffic lights I was facing a silver VW Golf travelling in the opposite direction, it's wipers going full pelt. That's a famililar sight. That's my real car, my real weather, my real life. But how can we be happy with it after all of this? We're lucky to have the choice, but who wants to make a decision like that?

Cockroaches

The cockroach situation seems to be getting worse. Last night we saw the biggest one yet crawling on the wall above the washing machine while two of his mates were starting the get-away car on the kitchen work surface. I made Darren go through the ironing basket shaking every last item of clothing afterwards. It's freaking me out.

We've bought some stuff to get rid of them. They call them "bombs" so now we have to "bomb" the kitchen. The problem is, you have to switch the fridge off beforehand then leave the house for at least two hours. I'm not worried about the food, I'm worried about moving the fridge to get to the plug.

We haven't bombed them yet. I'm waiting for Darren to get a day off work so he can do the bombing while I do the scarpering.

In the meantime, I've left three cans of bomb and a can of "Mortein Fast Knockdown Insect Spray" on top of the cooker as a sort of warning to them. The cans all have pictures of dead cockroaches on the front. They look exactly like the pictures you see on electric substations and electricity pylons subtitled "Danger of Death"; the one where the bloke is lying on his back and a burst of electricity is striking him in the chest. The Mortein cans are like public information notices for cockroaches, but will they take heed?

Custard Apples

So lets get this straight. God creates this continent and litters the edges with white sand and turquoise waters. He creates a few tropical reefs here and there and fills the skies with sulphur-crested cockatoos and comical fruitbats in leather bikers jackets, the latter hanging bleary-eyed from telegraph wires at dawn, looking hungover.

Then he turns heating up to "nice and warm", halves the cost of petrol and teaches every young boy how to drive a cricket ball to the boundary rope.

And finally, on the seventh day (when you thought he was resting), he creates the custard apple. A fruit that tastes like a pudding. So what if they cost $5 each? Devon knows how they make it so creamy.

Apparently there's a "chocolate pudding fruit" as well. I saw a programme about them last week. They look and taste exactly like an enormous chocolate truffle when you bite into them. As if you needed any more incentive to emigrate.

So who had the last laugh - the convicts or the men who condemned them to this penal colony?

Happy Mothers Day

It's mothers day in the UK tomorrow, but not in Australia. We can't buy cards because there are none in the shops so we would like to say "Happy Mothers Day" to our mums (and to all mums reading this).

Mothers everywhere will appreciate the picture.

The Elusive Yellow Sign

As Promised...

The Right Choice

The decision to come to Australia wasn't an easy one. This year is costing us dearly in many ways, not just financially. For a while we considered giving the whole thing up and staying in the UK.

When we arrived, things were pretty grim. You probably got that impression from the blog, but you can double that. If I'd told you the whole story; how unsettled Ella had been, how she had woken me three and four times per night crying "Mummy", just wanting a cuddle, how she'd constantly asked about "home" and about "Becky and Jon and the children", you'd have had a better idea. She knew we were miserable. She was miserable too. It made us question what we'd done.

We didn't want to upset the grannies, so we didn't tell you.

When I look at these photos, I know we made the right choice in the end, whatever the cost. I reckon we might be having the time of our lives. Australia is the most amazing continent. We don't take a single minute of this for granted - we're very lucky and we know it.

Back to Sydney

Realising that Ella needed some entertainment, we headed back via Kiama so that she could paddle in the ocean rock pools. It wasn't terribly successful. The water in the rockpool (on the right) was as warm as a bath but Ella couldn't decide between that and the ocean pool (on the left) so stood blocking the steps and crying instead. In the end we dried her off and took her to a delicatessen where I bought some sweet potato and spinach frittata for her tea, then walked across the road to the playground.

The playground ran off some of her frustration but the frittata ended up thrown onto the grass for the seagulls so we cut our losses and headed back to Sydney.

It's odd thinking of Sydney as home, but we definitely felt we were coming home. We'd set cockroach baits before we left so I was preoccupied with thoughts of roaches all the way home and kept imagining all the places they might be hiding while we'd been away. The journey was thoroughly miserable - Ella whining constantly for two hours (and who could blame her) while we were torn between stopping the car (again) and pressing on to Sydney.

By the time we got home it was 8.30pm. There was a large cockroach in the washing machine and a smaller cousin in Ella's bedroom. Darren evacuated the washer while I stamped on the other one with my shoe until I was sure it was dead. I brushed it under the air con unit. Five minutes later it was nowhere to be seen. They play dead. They are worse than you can imagine.

Kangaroo Valley

From the national park we descended back down the hills into Kangaroo Valley, which we thought owed its name to there being kangaroos in the area. In fact it's on the banks of the Kangaroo River, so there were no roos for us today.

From Fitzroy Falls, Kangaroo Valley is approached via Hampden Bridge, a single track, wooden, rickety old suspension bridge spanning the Kangaroo river. It rattles and shakes when lorries venture across it. I wouldn't fancy my luck in a petrol tanker.

The little town of Kangaroo Valley consists of a few wooden buildings either side of the main road. There's not much to do and there was nowhere for Ella to run about, which was a problem because she was getting fed up with the journey. It was also much hotter than on the coast and the flies were more of a problem.

We stopped for lunch in the Blue Toucan Cafe (run by an English couple) and bribed Ella with a dish of ice cream while we had something to eat. The ice-cream worked for a while, but by the time our food arrived she had progressed to trampling the flower beds. The owner's wife saw the impending calamity and brought her some crayons, but as the table was on an incline, the crayons kept rolling onto the floor. I thus ate my lunch whilst simultaneously catching rogue crayons and swatting flies (the aussie salute is coming on a treat). It's incredible that more of my food didn't end up on the walls.

Fitzroy Falls

Continued up into the Darling Range and on towards Morton National Park where we stopped at Fitzroy Falls. We weren't planning on going there but Ella had fallen asleep so we kept driving into the hills. The scenery here is a bit like the blue mountains, the vegetation a mix of sub-tropical rainforest and dry Eucalypt forest.

Anyway, the view from the boardwalk was lovely and the visitors centre featured some stuffed animals including a pelican and a fox, both of which pleased Ella. She also came away with a fluffy kangaroo, which pleased me. We were glad we'd made the detour.