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?