Big Sky

13th March

There's not much to do here, but I'm surprised to learn that I'm enjoying life away from the city. This is the beach outside our cabin. The photo is worth clicking onto. As I have no filter for the camera, I've cheated and taken the shot through my sunglasses. You really get an idea of the colour of the ocean if you filter out some of the sunlight.

We can hear the ocean hitting the shore all night long and we occasionally hear the laugh of a kookaburra, which sounds exactly like a monkey. Last night something dropped onto the roof and woke me up. It was heavy enough to have been a possum. I couldn't get back to sleep afterwards and lay listening to the ocean and the trees, wondering about the aborigines who originally lived here and thinking that they would have heard exactly the same sounds every night.

This evening we kept Ella up a bit later so we could go down to the beach together and look at the night sky. We all sat on the sand while the stars slowly filled the sky to bursting point. The milky way stretches from north to south along the beach and with little ambient light, the whole sky glitters. It's beautiful. It brings tears to your eyes.

Ella looked up at the stars and really noticed them. She had one thing to say - "big sky". And she was right.