Trade Off

This morning I took Ella to see Kate and Bradley, who've moved out of the house they'd been sharing with Paula and into a rented flat of their own.

Kate's not happy.

The flat is on the first foor of a 1960's block complete with 1960's tiled entrance hall. There's graffiti on the walls and the stairwell isn't secure because the outside door blows in the wind; nobody has a key. Buildings like this have been torn down in Britain, and when they haven't, they've been refurbished, or else they're part of some inner city sink estate, not a leafy (and affluent) suburb like Randwick.

Last week someone was sick in the stairwell. The pool of vomit was there a week before the Cuban lady nextdoor finally cracked and cleaned it up. And then they had a break-in; kids probably. The intruders took the car keys and it cost them $500 to change the locks. It wasn't a great start.

"We've signed the lease for twelve months" said Kate as she showed me around. "The kitchen's alright, a bit cramped I suppose. And we've nowhere to dry wet clothes, which is going to be a problem in winter"

"No heating?" I asked

"Don't be silly" she said. "Heating? In Sydney? And no air conditioning either. We can't open the windows because there's no fly screen and anyway, the traffic noise is appalling. I haven't had a night's sleep since we got here"

"You're going to bake" I said

"Yeah I know. And in the winter we'll freeze. And in between it might be okay"

Kate's daughter is nine. She's sharing a bedroom with her three year old brother. Kate reckons she'd live like this forever before she'd go back to Britain. I'm not sure I could be so philosophical.

This afternoon we went down to Coogee for coffee. Ella had a spotty cookie though she was so tired from refusing her nap that she couldn't eat it and sat picking the smarties off the top instead. Afterwards we walked down the seafront to Grant Reserve, where the local council has just finished renovating the playground. The result is superb, and all this perched on the clifftop with the women and children's swimming pool nestled into the cliff face below and those coin-operated barbeques for those sunny weekend breakfasts.

Oddly, we bumped into Kate at the playground. "I've just picked Lucy up from school" she said. "We come down here quite often, I get the kids an ice-cream from Baskin Robbins over there and they have a run around. I mean, seriously Sarah, what would I be doing right now in Britain?"

"Well right now you'd be asleep" I replied. "But I see your point".

But what about the trade off? Perhaps it's different when you've actually made the decision, but the people back home would be horrified if they saw what she was putting up with, because to them, she's simply gone to Sydney; she's made it.

It's a world away from A New Life Down Under. I'm not sure how many others would want to swap.

Ella Meets Skippy - I

Some (rather grainy) film of Ella meeting the kangaroos on the beach when we stayed at Murramarang National Park back in March.

Ache

It's been an interesting couple of days in the office, an office where nobody tells anyone else anything until the last minute; until it's too late to argue.

We had a new member of staff join the team yesterday; Julia, a new graduate with Shirley Valentine specs and an alarmingly high waistband; her thin leopardskin belt doing a sterling job of underwiring her bra.

The funny thing is, the new girl's my replacement, but until today, I hadn't given them my notice, so she'll be shadowing me for another four weeks before I finally hang up my pen torch. Yes, I'm giving up my job for the summer, a sentence I've dreamed of writing for years and now it's a reality. Bring on the grill.

Anyway, nobody told me the new girl was starting and nobody told me she'd be observing me working for the next four weeks, which is a bit of a bugger and really puts the skids on any illicit food shopping on the way past Coles or nipping into the Birkenstock shop along the Parramatta road on the way back from Haberfield on Mondays. From now on, I'm going straight.

So yesterday we all went out for lunch to welcome Julia to the department. The university has an incredible array of restaurants on the doorstep, ranging from Thai through Lebanese to African and Moroccan, the food cheap as chips to entice the students through the door (the equivalent of £2.50 for a plate of Pad Thai).

My colleague Anna is feeling very down in the dumps since her husband reversed his car over their West Highland Terrier last Saturday, so I dragged her along too, still tearful, and receiving very little in the way of support from anyone else in the department, all of whom think she's being overly-sensitive aboout the dog and really ought to suck it up.

Anna began the conversation.

"Has Australia been different than you imagined it would be then?" she asked

"Well yes and no" and replied. "I mean, no because we'd been here twice before, but yes because being a tourist is very different from being a resident. And when you arrive as a tourist, you leave as a tourist. When you leave as a resident, you leave a life behind; a home, a job, friends. I don't think you can ever look at it the same way again"

"I lived in Newcastle-upon-tyne for two years" she said. "And I have such fond memories. I mean, I wanted to come home, but the place itself got under my skin and I suppose I carry something of it with me forever now, in my heart"

"It's true" said Julia. "My parents were Irish immigrants on the ten pound passage in the sixites, so I always felt a connection with Ireland. I went to live there and met my husband, had my daughter in Dublin, thought I felt settled. But after six years it began to get to me, the grey skies, so I came home. And after that I was torn between the two, could never be happy in either. You know, you'll go home and you'll physically ache for Australia, there will be days you'll feel your bones aching at the thought of it, just like they probably ache for Britain from here"

"That's the thing" I said, "they don't ache at all"

"But you have the return ticket. You have the return to Heathrow in your back pocket. It would be different if you didn't know you were heading home"

"I suppose you're right. No, I know you're right, but the aching for Australia disturbs me because I felt it even before we came to live here. How will I put the lid on it now?"

"You won't" said Anna. "You'll learn to live with it. Or you'll emigrate. Either way, it's going to be painful, I know that because I've seen how you look up into the sky and it's like you're miles away. I see the cogs turning and I see you pull yourself together and shake it off"

"Nah" I replied, "I've probably caught a Quantas in the corner of my eye, either that or I've spotted a cockatoo in the garden or something"

"Rubbish. You're looking at our big sky. The big sky was what I really missed"

"Exactly" said Julia. "I don't think I'd ever appreciated the light we have in Australia until I was in Dublin. And the sky is so huge"

"It IS!" I replied. "But that's the first time I've heard anyone else say it. The sky is huge, I can't explain it, and I can't even think of a reason why. Why is it so big?"

"I don't know" said Anna. "But in Britain, you feel closer to the sky. In Australia it's so unreachable, you know, so vast"

I think it's the clouds. They give you perspective, don't they? They tell you roughly when to expect the next bucketful of rain. The blue sky's just endless sunshine, no idea when it's going to end.

I'm aching already.

nb Suck it Up, vt, To stop whining and pull yourself together, (Australian, colloq.)

Fish and Chips

We've been down to Bondi this evening to grab fish and chips from Bondi Surf Seafoods while it was still light. You can tell it's a Tuesday evening because there are queues at the petrol pumps around the city; not because we run short of petrol every week but because the government alters the price of fuel according to a predictable pattern. So the petrol's cheapest on a Tuesday evening and most expensive on a Friday, which is supposed to raise extra revenue when the Aussies fill up their utes for the weekend drive up the coast. I'm sure there's some sort of sense behind it, I just can't see it.

Wherever you go in the city there's a fishmonger just waiting for the cue to feed you something lightly battered or grilled; barramundi, ling, sea perch and flake, which you might remember is the sneaky Australian way of dressing up shark meat.

Bondi Surf Seafoods has won awards for it's freshly battered fish. It's run by an Italian family and it's always the same bespectacled bloke working the hot food counter when you go in. And God knows how, but he's cottoned on to deep fried mars bars as well and he must be selling them because they're lined up ready-battered on the shelf behind the fryers.

Anyway, we laid out the picnic blanket and sat on the hill behind the beach watching the last of the day's surfers emerging from the water; a sea mist drifting in across the cliffs turning the colour of dusk a shade of grey-blue while the Icebergs pool copped a lashing from the waves. Bondi's not our favorite beach, but it certainly has character if you don't mind sharing the grass with the local drunks and dreadlocked backpackers.

Ella's better, as you might have guessed. She wolfed the fish and chased a few seagulls before bedtime. A great way to end anyone's day.

Swimming

A video of Ella swimming in Noosa.

Am a technophile. It's official.

Sick as a Parrot

27 degrees today and the first time I've had the air conditioning on inside the flat. It's the the fourth day in a row I've spent alone with Ella, who's still sick as this parrot I found in the botanical gardens a few months ago. For me, the cabin fever has well and truly set in, though we put the clocks forward last night so it's a big Hurrah! for daylight saving and at least the 5.15 waking has moved to 6.15. We're now GMT +11, which makes phone calls and webcams much more convenient.

They do daylight saving all over Australia except in Queensland, so Brisbane is now an hour behind, even though it's just up the coast. There have been moves to change the rules, but the proposals keep getting thrown out, so the Gold Coast is threatening to take matters into their own hands and wind the clocks forward anyway, which is a bit like Liverpool and Manchester being in different time zones. I don't know whether they'll actually do it, but it's typically Gold Coast, a place that doesn't appear to give a stuff about anything.

This afternoon I walked Ella down to Coogee for another afternoon constitutional and immediately realised why we go everywhere in the car.

It only takes fifteen minutes or so to walk down to Coogee but some of the streets are incredibly steep and getting back is hard work, especially once a child gets to Ella's age. Still, it's a pleasant walk on the way there, even if it's a shocking haul to get home, and I love looking at all the individual houses and buildings on the way down because they're all in such different styles and states of repair. Some of them have names hung on plaques by the front door; I noticed one today with Ormskirk marked out in shiny copper, which really made me smile, but not as much as the building called Malcolm at Bondi Junction makes me smile. What sort of name is that for a block of flats?

Coogee was buzzing with the usual sorts; families with young kids, British backpackers wearing board shorts in the pattern of the Australian flag, skinny girls in yellow K-Mart dresses eating all sorts of pies and bread rolls and Pide (pronounced pidder), which is a sort of cross between a pizza and a kebab.

Anyway, we didn't stay long at the beach because the humid, overcast conditions have brought out even more flies, which are buzzing about in shocking numbers, hitching rides on people's backs (they prefer white clothes - one guy went past me with fifteen bluebottles on his back) and landing on your lips and sunglasses and trying to fly up your nose. I'm still considering the Kakadu fly net and/or swinging cork hat because in the past few weeks I've started to understand why they were invented. What a pity the image of the cork hat has been hijacked and elevated to some sort of comical status, because given the extent of the fly problem some days, I'd be more than happy to wear one.

In the meantime, it's the good old Aussie salute, a salute everyone's having a crack at down in Coogee today.

Red Mick

Day four in the leper house and like all nurses, I'm busy surfing the internet while my patient is alseep. Of course, if I was a real nurse I'd be surfing it while they were awake as well, but I digress.

On my surfing travels I came across this picture of Mick Hucknall and I can't help wanting to share it with you.

I used to love Mick Hucknall years ago, like in the late eighties and early nineties. Simply Red was the first band I ever saw live and the sight and sound of him prancing around the stage at the G-Mex had me hooked. Whatever you think of him (and Darren refers to him variously as the ginger tosser and Prick Suck 'em all so say what you like), you can't deny he's one of the greatest soul-singers the country has ever produced.

At the height of my adoration, I used to wear a Stars tee-shirt to university, along with a long star pendant on a leather chain, and it was in a similar get-up that I ran so fast across the Docklands Arena to get a spot at the front that I tripped and fell over some wires and had to be tended to by the St John's Ambulance for a sprained ankle. Literally falling over myself to see the guy

Anyway, the last time I saw him, I wasn't impressed. The voice was still there but the passion for the music had gone, as though he'd spent so long listening to his own music and believing his own hype that even he was bored with himself. And half the audience were wearing slacks.

I read today that Simply Red has disbanded, and about time too. He's looking uncannily like Eddie Large. For years Darren has been saying he's pug ugly and at last I can see his point.

Crabby

A lovely sunny Saturday and we were supposed to be going over to Scott and Steve's for their barbeque at lunchtime. That was until Batman went to the butcher to buy sausages and left the batphone on the bed, which rang in his absence, alerting me to the fact I'd be spending another day alone with Ella.

So off he toddled to the airport and I was busy bundling up the case and hand luggage for Steve to take home to Warington when Ella promptly brought up her breakfast all over her clean clothes. The barbeque just wasn't to be.

Faced with another afternoon as the local lepers, I took Ella down to Rose Bay for a walk and some sea air, where the buzzing of the hoards of flies around your ears and nose was matched only by the buzzing of the Channel 10 news helicopter hovering over the ferry wharf. Someone famous was getting married; evidently arriving by boat, though I wouldn't know a Sydney celebrity from a bar of soap so the whole thing held not even the slightest bit of interest.

And if yesterday's setting was recovery, today's was whine. Nothing was right; the sea breeze was too windy, the fleece blanket wasn't the right one (the right one being in the washing machine owing to it being covered in sick). NO she did't want a drink. NO she didn't want a cuddle.

"I wanna go Stephen and Scott's house" she wailed, "I want my barbeque".

It was as much as I could do to stop myself shopping for a hip flask because I'm fast coming to the conclusion it's the only way I'm ever going to survive the toddler years. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ruling the hip flask out, it's just hard getting into those sorts of shops with a pushchair.

Anyway, she eventually fell asleep and I discovered a good bookshop, then a toyshop where the shop assistants were clearly more excited about the toys than the kids themselves, including one bloke who was trying to sell a Duplo fire engine to a woman by running up and down the narrow aisles to demonstrate how it worked.

"WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO" he shouted, "and it doesn't even run on batteries so you'll never have to worry about replacing them"

"Look, sorry, my daughter's asleep here" I said. "I know that makes me sound like a crabby old bitch, and I love the fire engine impression, but she's been up since half four so I'd appreciate if you'd tone it down a bit".

Crabby old bitch or not, I'm a tired old bitch and God help anyone who comes between Ella and the elusive nap.

Afterwards I got a coffee and parked my arse on a bench overlooking the harbour. The stiff breeze had brought out the yachties with their blue and pink and green sails, whole flotillas of them navigating the channels. I'm sure the view of yachts on the water is exactly what God had in mind when he carved Port Jackson; it's just how Sydney's supposed to look. Myself I reckon it would look better through the bottom of a glass right now, a nice glass and a nice kip.

Recovery

The thing about having a sick child is that nobody wants to be your friend, especially not those people who've got kids themselves.

Sally Dawson phoned me for the first time in months this morning. She was heading out for morning tea in Coogee and wondered whether we fancied joining her. We did, of course, but it was only fair to say Ella had been ill yesterday, at which point she backed off the whole idea, understandably so as Ella and Niamh would probably be all over one another in the cafe.

But then Kate phoned to see what we were up to (and I think that's the first time ever our Sydney phone has rung twice in the same morning), at which point I'd decided to push Ella around Centennial Park for convalescence and fresh air; that's her convalescing and me needing the fresh air - a touch of the gastro being no Glade Plug-in.

Alas, Kate didn't want to be friends either, didn't even want to chance walking alongside us in the park in case Bradley caught the lurgy, so pity all those joggers and mums with jogger strollers who brushed past us because they're probably hanging over their toilets as I type (and speaking of mothers with jogger strollers, has nobody told them how daft they look jogging with a pram?).

Anyway, we did an hour circuit of the park on our own, past the pond with the resident pelicans and black swans. Ella was on recovery setting all the way around, a setting I've never seen before, one where she sits quietly in the stroller while I point out lillipads and cockatoos, one without the usual fight over her wanting to get out of the pushchair but not really wanting to walk. One without any whining.

I like the recovery setting a lot, but I don't think it's set to last much longer.

Poorly Sick

No blog entry yesterday because I was busy re-adjusting my paper cap; Ella's been crook and I've been playing nurse. It was nothing serious, just a gastro that's been going around nursery, one I thought we'd escaped because we'd gone to Noosa.

It's the first time Ella's ever been properly poorly and unfortunatley she decided the best place to aim your projectile vomit is right down the front of your mother's clothes. As she threw up eight times, the washing machine has been going all day and night ever since. I'm really not good with vomit, though realise now I'll have to toughen up because it'll be approximately ten years before she can deal with her own.

By yesterday afternoon she couldn't even keep sips of water down. She was listless and drowsy and her feet were cold. I called Batman, who came home to take a look at her.

"Hmm" he said, stroking his chin. "Do you want to take her into hospital?"

"I don't know" I replied. "You're the doctor, what do you think?"

"We'll keep an eye on her over the next few hours and make a decision later"

So she went onto monitoring, even after she'd asked to go to bed at 6pm, and I just sat there worrying what they'd do to her in hospital and would they do it properly? We have no private healthcare insurance, just reciprocal arrangements through the Australian Medicare system. The reciprocal arrangement means they'll give like-for-like medical care to British citizens, provided they can produce a Medicare card.

The general perception is that the public health system isn't a patch on the private. Darren reckons it depends what's wrong with you. And there's some things the Australians pay for that he doesn't think are worthwhile, like antenatal care and giving birth in private hospitals, where the facilities for an emergency aren't always on site. When he worked in the private system, Darren would sometimes be the only doctor on call for the entire hospital; not just the only anaesthetists, the only doctor. Makes you look at Carl Kennedy with whole new eyes.

Anyway, the patient had a good night and she's making a recovery on the sofa with The Wiggles and her Toastie Pup. I'm going slowly round the bend, but then I'm just the nurse.

Packing Up

My ex-step brother rang to remind us they're having a barbeque on Saturday, which was lucky because, what with all this gadding about, it had gone clean out of my mind.

"And are you still going back to the UK soon?" I asked

"Yeah. Sunday actually"

"What? This Sunday? Do you still want to stay in our house?"

"Yeah, if that's okay"

"Well we'll have to get a TV licence. You can't sit there for three weeks without watching the telly"

"No, not really. But I can take some of your stuff back, I'm travelling business class and they usually let me get away with 38 kilograms"

"I'll pack a bag".

So this evening I arranged for a new TV licence, though I was a bit stumped when it came to the bank details and sat looking at all the cards in my British purse (because I have an Australian one as well), unable to remember which account was which. And then I dragged a case out from under the bed, one of the cases that doesn't have mould growing inside it since the damp Sydney winter, and I started packing. Packing up.

It's exciting packing up, exciting thinking about returning to a normal life and a normal house with washing machine that doesn't eat your clothes. First I put in some bath towels; he can't stay at our house without our bathtowels, and in any case, Darren's stolen one from almost every hotel we've visited, so we've enough here to last us a month.

After the towels went the walking boots, my shirts for work and our fleeces, but I wasn't sure about Darren's Berghaus coat so I went back into the sitting room where he was tapping away at the internet and held it up.

"What about this?" I asked. "Do you need it?"

"I'm going to Lancaster" he replied, a statement my brain struggled to compute; were the chopperdocs sending him overseas again? To Lancaster? Because he'd definitely need that coat in Lancaster, or hang on, was it a Lancaster bomber? Because an image of one flashed across my mind. I looked at him quizically.

"In January, I mean. I'm in Lancaster for six months"

"Lancaster? Jesus. What sort of commute is that?"

I went back into the bedroom and zipped up the case and suddenly I didn't like the idea of packing up. Suddenly I wanted to stay in this grotty flat, cockroaches or no cockroaches.

Back to the NHS training scheme, the programme for training consultant doctors playing havoc with their personal lives; not just the time and personal expense of sitting exams (which cost thousands of pounds for every attempt) but the long hours and lack of predictability, the rotas that change every week, the same rotas that don't get published until a week or so in advance, making planning your personal life a real headache. The nights, the weekends. It's depressing.

And after all that, after years and years of flogging themselves to death, so many of them planning to leave the NHS for Australia. You can hardly blame them.

Anyway, I've written Steve a list of things he needs to know about the house; the ignition doesn't work on the fireplace, that sort of thing.

"Daz, when you reset the burglar alarm, what do you press?" I shouted

"I can't remember"

"And the telly, you have to press a series of buttons to get it to work"

"Yeah, but I can't remember them"

"How do you turn the central heating on? I can't remember"

"Neither can I"

Oh well, your Dad knows how everything works. Now where's your door keys? We'll have to send him with those because his flight gets in at seven o'clock Monday morning.

"My keys?" there was a long pause. "I haven't got a clue where my keys are".

We looked at each other blankly. We've abandoned our home and the only thing we remember is the address.

Planning Meeting

An unusual day at work today because we were having a planning meeting, though nobody had told me about this, nor had I received the questionnaire about my life at work, the questionnaire asking staff to nominate their three wishes for 2008.

The department I work for had some huge structural changes this time last year, changes which came about because nobody was happy. Things got so bad they had to hire a HR consultant to come and sort it out, but even she wasn't up to the job because the first planning meeting ended up in a slanging match and afterwards, a whole bunch of them resigned their posts.

After that, the HR consultant helped work out some sort of strategic recovery plan so the new staff coming into post would feel happier. Today marked a year since the beginning of the recovery plan, time for the department managers to reflect on their successes.

"I've gotta say" she began, "I was dreading coming in here today. I came here twelve months ago and you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. And the staff satisfaction survey rated your satisfaction with your work at 40%"

She started fiddling with her powerpoint presentation; a pie chart came gliding into view from the righthand side to prove her point - sure enough, 60% of staff were deeply dissatisfied this time last year.

"And what great strides we've made" she continued, clicking her mouse to reveal a new pie chart, "70% of you are now happy with your jobs. I think that deserves a round of applause"

And with that the senior management began the clapping and the rest of the staff followed. All of them except Jackie and I.

"But they didn't survey the same set of staff" I whispered to Jackie. "The 60% who were deeply dissatisfied have all buggered off. The 70% satisfied are all new members of staff"

"Exactly" she muttered back through the corner of her mouth. "And they think we haven't noticed"

As soon as the clapping had died down, the management team were on their feet with a few announcements of their own; first an enormous bunch of Asiatic lillies for the HR lady, and secondly an attractive array of cupcakes from a swanky shop downtown; one for everyone, each with a birthday candle stuck through its icing to celebrate the year since our new beginning. The CEO lit each cake with a match before giving the green light to tuck in. The thin girls ate the decorations from the top. Those of us with hips ate the lot.

Afterwards it was time to look in more detail at the results of the staff survey. What was good about the job? What needed to change?

"I don't see any of my comments reflected in these results" said Hilary, our British psychologist. The accent said Oxford, the face said Sydney. "What did you do with the originals?"

"I shredded them" said Mary. "I made notes then put them through the shredder, but I did read them and the results are all collated here"

"No they're not" replied Hilary. "My comments have not been included"

Mary pursed her lips and crossed her legs. The HR lady jumped in with another powerpoint slide and saved the day.

"Firstly, your opinions on what needs to change. Day to day things, the salary sacrifice system needs reform, you don't like having to bank a benefits cheque every month. Mary, is that something your financial controller can fix?"

"Er sorry" interrupted Hilary, "There are far greater issues at stake here. Job security for a start"

"I don't follow" said Mary, who clearly followed but needed more time to think of her response.

"Well, in an organisation where you make people redundant on maternity leave, I mean, we're left wondering who's next. You called Yvette in for a meeting about returning to work and told her she wouldn't be returning at all, not now, not ever. Her post has become obsolete. If the department is in such bad financial shape, perhaps you want to share that with us"

Jackie unfolded her legs and crossed her arms. "Tin hat anyone?"

"Popcorn?" I offered

Mary went red in the neck and said she had no information about any financial position, just the research co-ordinator's job was no longer required. She'd taken on the role herself.

"Hmm" signed Hilary, shuffling papers on her knee. The lack of eye contact spoke volumes.

"Right" said the HR lady. "So we'll look into the matter of the benefits cheque. Now I've given you all some post-it notes and I want you to write your biggest wish for 2008 on the sticker and post it onto this whiteboard". The room was buzzing with wishes for 2008. I sat with my pen wondering what I was supposed to say. World peace or just a bit more legroom in economy? What to write?

In the event I wrote some wishy-washy statement about continued success in the same direction, you know, using lots of corporate speak and buzz words. Then I sat down and waited while the HR lady read out the general themes.

"Excuse me" said Hilary. "What about mine?"

"This one? Oh, well, it says you'd like effective and approachable management and a transparent salary spine"

"I want to know what the CEO earns" she replied flatly. "And the fundraisers and the people who handle the financial side of things. The clinician's salaries are open for viewing, why not theirs?"

"This is going to kill you, Sarah" said Jackie. "Far too confrontational for the British"

"You're not joking" I replied. "I can hardly bear to watch, it's like The Office. We don't do this in Britain; we don't bring things out into the open and we don't mention money. I might have to go and lie in a dark room if this carries on much longer"

"I think Hilary's adapted quite well" she replied, "for a pom"

I can't tell you much about what happened in the afternoon because I was busy hyperventilating in a corner, though I do know that the issue about the CEO's salary was never resolved; Mary had already looked into it and found it's commonplace for CEO salaries to remain shrouded in mystery. Funny how she was prepared for the question though, perhaps she'd read it somewhere before.

Tall Poppies

They were having a wear your favorite party clothes theme at Ella's nursery today, though as Ella's only ever been invited to one party in Australia, she doesn't exactly have an extensive wardrobe of occasional wear and had to go out in her new fairy dress instead.

Of course, the theme ought really to have read ruin your favorite party clothes because ruining childrens' clothes is all part of the service at Ella's nursery, a service that really comes back to bite you on the bum the first time you try removing stains in a crappy toploader. The toploader doesn't wash clothes, it wets them; to remove stains you need a bucket and an industrial tub of Napisan, an attractive feature of any modern Australian kitchen.

And I'm not just talking about a bit of pasta sauce. I'm talking about glue and glitter and poster paints and pasta sauce, because they let the kids loose with paints when there aren't enough aprons to go around. So half the kids go home with horrifically disfigured clothes to the point I've thrown away several brand new tee shirts after the first wear, sort of disposable clothing I suppose you'd say. And don't even get me started on hair slides because somewhere in that nursery there must be a small mountain of little flowers and snails and ladybird clips all belonging to Ella, who evidently thinks we have money to burn.

We've had another scorcher of a day here in Sydney (ar rather, a stinker as my patients have all described it), 35 degrees by lunchtime and far too hot to do any work. The downside is that we have air conditioning in the office, which means there's no chance of claiming it's physically unsafe to remain in the building, a tactic I tried without success when I worked at the old Garven Place clinic. And the home visits all had air conditioning as well. Bugger.

At lunchtime I joined the rest of the staff sitting outside the university refectory to celebrate our receptionist's birthday, which was last Friday. Any excuse to sit in the sun and kick off my shoes; the sun was cracking the flags.

"I see you've got a suntan Sarah" said Kath. "And quite a good one as well. You look more like an Aussie than any of us"

"I need the vitamins" I replied. "And anyway, how come none of you are sitting out in it?"

"Because we're time bombs" she replied. "They didn't have effective sunscreen when we were kids. Our mothers covered us in zinc but it's not the same. They say all the damage is done in the early years, perhaps the first ten. We stay out of it so we don't develop cancer"

"You'd be better off to live in Britain then" I said. "Not much sun there, call it health insurance"

"No thanks. The traffic's the other way I think. The poms all want to live here - probably the Bundy Rum"

With that she took another slurp of her mango smoothie, which was served in a tall paper cup with little green Australias printed all over it. They're a patriotic lot, right down to their picnicware.

"The traffic is the other way" I said, "But we've got all your famous ones, your national treasures. I see Clive James was at the Opera House last week, just nipping back to Australia to do a gig. If Australia's so great, why don't they come home?"

"Well this place has never been hip" replied Kate. "It's always been a backwater, still is, though we pretend it's not"

"Well we're keeping Clive James" I said, "And Rolf. And Kylie as well. Not sure about Germaine Greer though. You can probably have her back"

She stopped sucking on her mango smoothie and pulled a face. "We don't want her. You can keep her. Anyway, I've heard dreadful reviews of the Clive James thing at the Opera House. I think he's got a bit big for his boots since he's been away; thinks he's more important than he really is"

"Or is that just Tall Poppy Syndrome?" I asked.

She shrugged and went back to her smoothie. "Maybe. I don't know. Anyway, I don't much like him so you can keep him for all I care. Him and Germaine Greer".

nb Tall Poppy Syndrome, n, a perjorative term used in Australia and New Zealand to describe a levelling social attitude. A person is said to be suffering form Tall Poppy Syndrome when their presumed economic, social or political superiority attracts criticism.

The phenomenon is often interpreted by foreigners as resentment of others' success. those who subscribe, however, often cite a dislike of snobbery or arrogance and will attack subjects who take themselves too seriously or flaunt their success without due humility.

Early Bird, by Ella

I don't know why my mum complains about me waking up so early because it's dead sunny outside. I mean, if she didn't like it she should hang some curtains like a normal mum. She hung some nets in Warrington before we left. They look a mess.

Anyway, if you get up early, you get more done. This morning I got up at five o'clock and finally got my hands on the Johnson's Baby talc my mum keeps out of reach. I thought I'd give myself a light dusting but got a bit carried away and covered the floor as well because I thought the olds would like a nice morning frost to look at. My mum was very cross when she got up. She said the living room looked like flamin' ground zero.

I told my mum it wasn't me but I she wasn't fooled because my footprints were all over the flat. Ha! Like she's always saying, the early bird catches the worm.

Barrenjoey Penninsula

Another deliciously sunny Sunday morning and Batman started the day like a bear with a sore head. I was considering getting up at five o'clock to watch the rugby myself, but as I don't understand the rules there wasn't much point. And when I did get up, there was no need to ask who'd won because the defeat was written all over his face and not even breakfast on the barbeque could perk him up.

We headed over the harbour to the northern beaches today; the temperature already standing at 30 degrees by half past nine. The funny thing is, either the sea breeze means it doesn't feel like 30 degrees, or else our thermostats are well and truly buggered up onto some sort of Aussie setting, in which case we're going to be doubly freezing cold come January.

You might remember that the most northerly of the northern beaches is Palm Beach, which is where they film Home and Away. Palm Beach sits on the eastern side of the Barrenjoey Penninsula, an odd-shaped spur of land at the entrance to Broken Bay. You can see the long stretch of sand at Palm Beach on the right hand side of the Penninsula in the picture - most of the filming locations for the show are towards the northern end of the beach.

At the head of the penninsula there's the Barrenjoey lighthouse and a golf course, then coming back down the western side there's a couple more beaches, though these face across Pittwater rather than across the Pacific, so they're perfect for small children because there's no surf (and as they face west, they get the sun all afternoon, which is a rarity because most Sydney beaches face east; fine in the morning but good only for a suntan on your back in the afternoon). Behind the beach the road climbs along the hills and as you get a glimpse of the view some of the residents have from their plate glass windows, you can't help wondering who these people are and how they got here (and given the home visit in Bronte, whether they're happy).

From the western side of the penninsula, you can catch a ferry across to Kuring-Gai Chase National Park, take a boat up the Hawkesbury River or even a sea plane back to Sydney Harbour if you've got the cash (and plenty of people around here do). We've considered the seaplane option, just for the novelty of it. I mean, you'd have to look the part; all white linen with a sort of nautical knit draped casually across your shoulders, but even if I owned such an outfit I'd never be able to stay clean and even if I could, we could never afford the return journey. The prospect of travelling back to Sydney on a bus sort of ruins the whole effect.

Anyway, the Barrenjoey Penninsula is one of my favorite spots around Sydney, not just because of the west-facing beach but because of the little shops along Barrenjoey Road, which includes a lovely cafe where they draw a leaf shape in the froth on the top of your skinny flat white (for those Sydneysiders truly obsessed with coffee) and the only shop in the whole of Australia stocking Brigitte Singh bags; a French designer who relocated to India and now makes all this stuff that's a blend of Indian and Provencal block printing; a sort of fabric heaven.

And then there's the other shops; a whole string of the most poncy shops you can imagine; the Palm Beach Wine Shop (also stocking posh crisps) and Palm Beach Couture (horrific nautical teeshirts and sequinned blouses in headache colours) and a couple of house style shops manned by their lady owners, ladies who spend six months of the year searching Europe and Asia for objets d'art yet somehow manage to get it all dreadfully wrong and cram their shops with all sorts of tat that just doesn't blend into any sort of theme, the prices on the little white tags seemingly plucked randomnly from the air.

The thing about these shops is that they're obviously just some sort of hobby for the wives of the rich, a tax fiddle probably. And when you walk in, you're usually the only customer in the shop, which gives the hideous spiders who work there ample opportunity to weigh you up before deciding whether you're worth bothering with. I walked into one of these webs today and found myself being followed around the racks of floaty linen and belts until I came to a halt in front of some eye-catching tapestried handbags.

"Oh, lovely bags" I commented to the owner, who didn't reply, despite having followed me so closely I could smell (and identify) her perfume. The little white tag read $700, reduced to $600, probably because they don't get any actual customers.

"Do they have a shoulder strap?" I asked, unhooking the clasp on top to look inside. I had no intention of parting with $600 but the problem with browsing in posh shops is you need some sort of recovery plan when you spot the price ticket. You need to look like you might part with $600.

"No" she replied sharply. "They're doctors' bags. Doctors' bag don't have shoulder straps"

"Oh, a doctor's bag" I replied. "For medical equipment then. Or can they be used as handbags?"

She scowled back at me.

"And where do you source them?" I asked

"I'm sorry, I don't know"

"Oh, sorry, I thought it was your shop"

"Yes, it is my shop"

"But you don't know where you get these handbags from? I mean, are they from overseas? India or somewhere like that?"

"Look, a woman who makes them came in and I said I'd sell them so now I've got four or five in different designs. Are you interested in buying them?"

"I might be" I replied. "But I'm not sure which one I like best. I think I'll get my husband and ask his opinion"

And that sewed up the recovery plan. I might part with $600 and I might not, but if I asked my husband's opinion, you can guess what the answer would be.

Boris

It was a very reluctant hello we said to Sydney this morning; we've become so blase about the place now I hardly bother to look out of the window as we glide past the harbour bridge on our approach.

One of the things I've noticed about coming home to Sydney is how quickly the climate can alter while you've been away. You can fly out of Sydney in winter and return a week later and find it looks like spring all over the place. Today it looks (and feels) like an Australian summer and I've noticed even the trees we face across the gully have changed colour since we left.

When we got back to the flat there was the usual welcoming committee, including a sizeable cockroach crawling acrss the carpet in our bedroom and another (medium-sized)huntsman spider in the stairwell, only this one was too busy to notice us; busy scooping up his lunch in one of his right hands and dropping it into his mouth using a sort of clumsy three point action. I asked Darren to go out and kill him but he refused and seeing as I'm too scared to do it myself, he's still there, for all I know slurping happily on a skinny flat white from Gloria Jean's

Our week in Noosa has left us feeling relaxed, though we ended up on a double date last night because we'd already agreed to meet Lucy and Paul in their apartment at five o'clock when Pippa and David suggested dinner at the yacht club at seven. Much as we've resolved to stop stressing ourselves out with social arrangements back home in the UK, we found ourselves doing exactly the same in Noosa, just because it was too difficult not to.

Anyway, in the event there were no tables at the yacht club so we ended up eating take-away on our balcony until almost midnight. Pippa and David are our NBFs (new best friends) and we're looking forward to catching up with them when they get back to Sydney.

Until then, I'll just be here, keeping my eye on Boris in the stairwell, who's worryingly close to crawling onto our balcony.

Babysitters

"D'ya reckon we'll still enjoy this Pimms drink when we get back to Sydney David? Or will we think it's an old lady drink?"

"Yeah, a Nana drink" said David, though I noticed he took another swig of it as he did.

We continue to have a good time in Noosa, though the shonky internet connection is cause for complaint (you pay in two hour blocks and recently it's been chucking me off after twenty minutes). In any case, there's been a good amount of red wine drunk around the pool, so perhaps it's better I haven't kept my daily blog.

Yesterday Pippa and I went back to the markets at Eumundi. The damage to the credit cards was such that we spent most of the journey home rehearsing what our purchases actually cost and what we were going to say they cost.

Then David came up with a great idea - they'd have Ella over for a movie and popcorn and we could go out for dinner, and the favour could be returned tonight.

So that's what we did, though after the home-made pizzas and cookies this evening, I can reveal that babysitting a two year old girl in return for two boys of four and six (they took the baby with them) is hardly a fair swap. Have you any idea how much noise two boys make?

Anyway, tomorrow's our last day in Noosa and we'll be reluctant to say goodbye, not just because we've made some new friends but because the flat we're staying in has all the home comforts of being, well, at home. It's always a bit of a downer returning to the flat in Sydney when we've stayed somewhere homely because the flat in Sydney has no curtains in the sitting room and no pictures on the walls. Whenever we leave a holiday we feel like we ought to be going home, so turning up in Sydney again can be a bit unsettling, though you can't quite put your finger on what it is you're feeling.

And after Noosa - possibly one or two more trips before Christmas - then no more.

"Thank God we can stop doing this" I said to Darren over dinner last night.

"Doing what?"

"Going on holiday. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm so sick of it. I feel caught up between wanting to pack it all in and wanting it all to stop, it's exhausting and living from a suitcase is much more draining when you do it every month".

Every month, almost. January we flew, March we went on holiday, April, May we went on three trips. In July we went to the barrier reef, August was Darwin, September was Orange, October Noosa. I realised tonight I can recognise the smell of the stuff they clean the toilets with on planes. Time to stop.

Lazy

Well, the hire car has gone back so now we've reverted to lazy mode and we're staying there until Saturday.

The good news is we've met a couple from Sydney who have three small kids. They're in the apartment nextdoor and their kids are keeping Ella entertained while we teach one another the finer points of British versus Australian life (we've rustled up a jug of Pimms, they've convinced me I need Havianas thongs and not these ones from British Home Stores).

Tonight all the kids watched a movie on their laptop computer in the yacht club, happily munching away at fish and chips while we had a few drinks.

Tomorrow Phillipa has convinced me I need a second stab at Eumundi markets so we're packing the kids off to the beach with their Dads. This is the life.

Sandcastles

Such is the beach culture out here, the Aussies are very practiced at making sandcastles and think nothing of rocking up and creating a masterpiece like the on ein the first photo (Tea Tree Bay, this morning).

I noticed Darren didn't comment, but as soon as we sat on the beach this afternoon he was shovelling the sand for all he was worth - a good effort (second picture) but still some way to go, I reckon.

Could this be a sort of Daddy rivalry, I wonder?

Sunshine Coast

We left the national park and drove south along the Sunshine coast for about seven kilometers until we arived here. Hardly a soul on the beach.

Do you know, there are people who have Australian passports who actually choose to live in the UK.

Weirdoes.

Dolphin Point

Pictures one and three - Dolphin Point, Noosa National Park

Picture two - Tea Tree Bay, also Noosa NP

Er, remind me again why I live in Warrington and not Noosa.....

Koala!

This morning we set off into the national park and followed the coastal path on foot as far as Dolphin Point, which is where the stroller access runs out and people with kids have to turn around.

After many attempts at spotting koalas in the wild, we finally found one today, sleeping peacefully in the fork of a gum tree, as you'd expect. Perhaps one day I'll have time to tell you about our ill-fated koala spotting trip to Lemon Tree Passage some years ago, when it poured with rain and the local shop had only one emergency poncho left. Suffice to say we didn't spot a single sodding koala and Darren had to drive back to Port Stephens in his knickers, so you'll understand why we were so excited to finally spot one.

Anyway, there are only 100,000 koalas left in the wild and they sleep for eighteen hours a day, which does tend to earn them the nickname lazy bastard.

"It's never fair dinkum" commented a passing Australian when he saw us looking up into the tree. "Probably a stuffed one, been put there for the tourists".

nb Fair Dinkum, adj, Genuine, (Australian Collq.). See aso Dinky Di.

The Glasshouse Mountains

Australia Zoo is set on the edge of the Glasshouse mountain range, so after we left the zoo we drove up to one of the lookouts.

The mountains were named by Captain Cook, though nobody's sure exactly why he chose the name (the theory goes they reminded him of glass furnaces in Yorkshire, though I'm not sure I see the similarity).

The last photo shows a Jacaranda tree, which isn't native to this country but comes from South America. They're lovely and they're blooming all over the place in the hinterland at the moment.

Anyway, the mountains are a bit weird-looking, until you realise they're actually the lava plugs from the centre of a series of volcanoes. The volcanoes themselves have been weathered away, leaving the solid rock that used to be at the centre, the lava that came up from the earth.

Good aren't they?

Baby Bengals

The big drawcards at the moment are the three Bengal tiger cubs.

You can't exactly get close to them, but if you give your camera to the zoo keepers, they'll take a few shots on your behalf. And all for the bargain price of $5.

The Crocoseum

Of course, the reason most people come is to see the crocodiles. A few years ago they built the crocoseum, which can hold thousands and thousands of people to watch the bird displays and crocodile feeding. People who saw the zoo before Steve became famous reckon it was better back then; more intimate. These days they're packing them in so I suppose they need seats for all those bums.

Crikey

Well you can't come to the sunshine coast without paying a visit to Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo, even if it costs $49 each to get through the gates.

The Irwin family have long been involved in running a zoo here at Beerwah and have earned respect for their work in animal conservation, not just at Australia Zoo or through Steve Irwin's television appearances but also because the family have invested huge amounts of their own money to buy land up and down Australia just so that it can be used as habitat for wild animals.

And Steve Irwin loved his zoo so much, he's actually buried inside, though it's anybody's guess where (rumour has it his ashes were fed to his favorite croc, which is obviously, well, a croc).

The selling point about Australia Zoo is it's supposed to be different from other zoos, you're supposed to be able to get more up close and personal with the animals, like this wombat, who was being walked about on a toddler harness in much the same way we used to be able to restrain Ella.

It's hard not to respect the family's work but having been to the zoo today it's also hard not to feel cynical about the direction it's moving in, and that's without even touching on the issue of Bindi Irwin (Steve's daughter), who seems to have been catapulted to some sort of iconic status since her dad died; fitness videos, a range of clothing, that sort of thing.

Anyway, here's Ella riding on the back of a plaster crocodile, shortly before she rode on the teacups with Mummy, who had a bit of a hangover. Take it from me, the teacups ride isn't somewhere you want to be if you've got a headache.

The Hinterland

Saturday

We've hired a car for three days so this morning we headed out of Noosa and up into the sunshine coast hinterland to visit the markets at Eumundi.

The markets turn out to be brilliant - probably the best markets I've ever seen, though Ella didn't agree and spent quite a lot of her time having tantrums because she needed to go to sleep. Then she did fall asleep and calm was restored and we got on with the important business of shopping, though the market closes at half one, a rule imposed by husbands to make sure their wives don't spend too much money.

Afterwards we drove into the Blackhall range of mountains and through the villages of Mapleton and Montville to Maleny. At Montville we stopped for a pint at an English pub, though 19,000 kms from London the beer doesn't taste quite the same (apparently). Still, the concept of selecting a cut of meat and barbequing it yourself in the beer garden is one we'd do well to adopt in Britain, if only it would stop raining for long enough.

Noosaville

I'm not supposed to tell you anything about Noosa. At least three separate people today have told me not to tell the tourists about it and I suppose with such an enormous continent to explore, it's no surprise the aussies feel they can afford to keep a few parts of it for themselves.

Problem is, there's just something about Noosa I can't put my finger on, something I want to jump up and down about because this is the only place in Australia I've found that truly makes me consider emigrating.

Sydney - too unfriendly, too expensive
Perth - too remote
Brisbane - not on the coast
Cairns - too hot and wet in summer;
Orange - too small
Darwin - also too hot and wet - and crocodiles in the sea

But Noosa has it all; friendly locals, great scenery, cheaper house prices (we could afford a large open plan house with a pool - and an annexe for visitors) and year-round temperatures averaging 25 degrees.

Noosa's an odd place to describe. Firstly, when people say Noosa, they might be referring to Noosa Heads, Noosaville or Noosa Junction. Noosa Heads is the flashy end of town where the posh hotels are (including the Sheraton and the Sebel; both high-rise and built before the authorities put a ban on anything over two storeys). This is where the main shopping street is (Hastings Street) as well as the main beach (pictured). Hastings Street has some very nice shops, some of them so posh that the women on the desk don't even bother to greet you, they just carry on flicking through style magazines.

Behind the main beach lies Noosa national park, which is the hilly part you can see in the photo. If you drive through here you find more beaches as you hit the main section of the Sunshine Coast, the Pacific coastline. The park also has wild koalas in the trees.

Moving inland, the beautiful Noosa River winds away from the coast; the colour of the water is like something from an aerial postcard shot; bathers bobbing about along the sandy shores, kids fishing, the ferry to Noosa Heads passing along every so often.

Further along the river is Noosaville, an hours walk from Noosa Heads, where there's a friendly yacht club doing great food. This is where the locals seem to live, at least, the ones who don't have ridiculous amounts of money to spend.

We're staying at Noosaville, so last night we had dinner at the yacht club and today we walked into Noosa Heads, had a browse along Hastings Street and stopped for a few hours at the main beach, where the water was a balmy 20 degrees (it's still 17 in Sydney). Then the surf lifesavers used their tannoys to tell everyone there were reports of a storm further down the coast and the beach emptied slowly, or at a much slower pace than it would empty in Sydney at any rate.

This evening Ella's been swimming in the pool long after it went dark. She gets into the pool independently now and this evening she's been jumping in when it's been empty, which marks a real increase in her confidence in the water.

This is a great place, much better than Port Douglas, much cheaper as well.

Just don't tell the tourists.

Goal

We didn’t have the greatest welcome to Noosa. The skies were clear as we approached, then Maroochydore airport came into view, and with it a very ominous cloudbank. Has nobody told the weatherman this is the Sunshine Coast?

By the time we landed, Ella resembled a child who’d flown to Noosa via Afghanistan, you know, all sticky-palmed and dirty-faced and pacing the floor with a heart-shaped lollipop like a caged animal. The situation isn’t helped by the fact we’re growing her fringe out and she keeps removing the hair slides, which leaves her hair dangling into her eyes like a street child of Sao Paolo.

You’d think travelling with children gets easier as they get older, but there seems to be this bit in the middle where they’re too old to sleep on journeys and too young to play happily with a Nintendo. Unfortunately for us, our year down under coincides exactly with this stage in Ella’s development and plane rides of any duration require gin for us and jelly snakes for Ella, even breakfast flights.

I’d like to say all kids are the same and most of them probably are, but we always manage to find ourselves sitting alongside some family of highly fragrant children, like little Leora and her parents who were seated in the row ahead of us yesterday. Leora was the sort of kid who could wear white and pastel pinks without looking grubby. Her mother had already fixed me with a look when she saw me bribing Ella with the jelly snakes during take-off, so once we were up in the air, I counterbalanced this by producing a new Wiggles magnets set, thus levelling the scores at 1-1.

However, after half time she retaliated with a Tupperware box of sliced apple, which was twice as irritating because we’d set off that morning with a Tupperware box of strawberries and blueberries but Ella had already snaffled the lot (strawberries and blueberries being worth far more than apples in the yummy mummy stakes).

By now I was trailing 2-1 and after I pulled out the cookie I’d bought at the airport, things slid to 4-1, from which I thought I’d never recover (that’s one minus point for the cookie and another for the fact I bought it at the airport).

The clincher came in extra time though, because while Ella prepared for landing (jelly snake in each hand; another hanging from the corner of her mouth), little Leora began her wailing and stomping. Call it underhanded, but I reached into my bag and pulled out an orange one and with the greatest satisfaction you can imagine, dangled it in her father’s face through the gap in the seats. I knew her mother wouldn’t go for the snake. Dads are much more of a pushover.

She shoots, she scores.

Off to Noosa

Look, I can't sit here talking to you all day. It's been at least two weeks since we had a trip and as we've only 98 days left in Australia, time to act.

Tomorrow we fly to Noosa, which is a small town on the so-called Sunshine Coast in Queensland; an hour north of Brisbane and about ninety minutes by plane.

When you tell people you're heading to Noosa, they all react in the same way; Ah, Noosa. Then they start gazing into the distance with a sort of half-stoned look on their faces and say lucky you.

So lucky us. We've got nine nights up there and access to wireless broadband.

Fancy a holiday? Come and join us......

Wednesday's Child, Full of Woe

We were out and about by nine o'clock this morning, heading across the city to meet Jan and Saul at Camperdown Oval, their local park.

There are loads of ovals in Australia; Sydney seems to have one for every suburb. It's where they play rugby in the winter and cricket in the summer, though the one at Camperdown has tennis and basketball courts as well as a children's playground. And there's usually some sort of bakery or cafe within spitting distance as well, though Camperdown oval is particularly well served because it has both; a cafe called Canteen (where all of the staff have unusually severe haircuts) and a swanky new bakery serving really good coffee alongside fresh baked blueberry muffins and raspberry friands.

Jan and her mothers' group used to meet under the fig trees at Camperdown oval after they'd had their babies and take it in turns to nip over to Canteen for their skinny flat whites. The babies are all coming up for their second birthdays now and the mums have gone back to work, but Jan still meets up with Kathy, who joined us today.

Unlike Jan and I, Kathy has produced a second child since her first, though it's not really been a happy experience and talking with her this morning made me reflect on the way things have changed for women since my grandmother's generation were having their kids, and how the changes don't seem to have done us many favours.

Kathy's forty now and she used to have a successful career in marketing, just like Jan, who used to have a successful career as a lawyer before she had Saul. Kathy studied for an MBA when she was in her late twenties, which really bumped up her earning potential and eventually allowed her a comfortable lifestyle including owning a house in the trendy inner west of Sydney.

Like loads of women of her generation, she concentrated on having a career because, well, it was the done thing, it was sort of expected that girls with half a brain would climb the career ladder just like men did, the problem was, she was so busy climbing the ladder she had no time for a social life outside work. The company she worked for offered a number of benefits to its employees, including someone to sort out her dry cleaning and someone else to deliver take-out food to her desk at 8pm. They might well have been paying her megabucks, but little by little, they began to own all of her time, from waking in the morning until going to bed at night, and sometimes she'd work the weekend too.

By the time she was thirty-seven, she found herself with neither a husband nor children and felt time was running out for either, so she cut back the hours at work and set about finding a bloke, which is a hard enough task in any city but twice as hard in Sydney because women in their thirties significantly outnumber the men. Anyway, she met Luke and they got married and that's when she had her first baby, Jake.

At first, she struggled to find a balance. Her employers didn't offer maternity pay, which meant she had to go back to work earlier than planned in order to pay the mortgage. Still, they did agree to her request to work part-time, which meant she could follow her instinct against placing a young baby in full-time daycare. Working three days a week was hard but manageable and there was just enough money to go around. There was the guilt of course, the guilt you place on yourself for leaving the child and the guilt others place on you for the same reason. Oh and the guilt her full-time colleagues made her feel when she left the office on time, but hey, it goes with the patch.

Then she spoke to her doctor, who raised the issue of having more children. Time wasn't on her side; she could delay things for practical reasons but knew she might regret it later, so, not wishing Jake to be an only child, she had Alfie when Jake was fifteen months old, and that was when it all started to go wrong. When I met her today, it was hard to imagine she'd ever been the young city slicker, hard to see past the track suit bottoms and hair scraped back off her face in a red bobble. She wasn't coping at all.

"It's shit" she began. "and I can't see any way out"

"Is Luke still studying every evening?" asked Jan

"Yeah, it's the last year of his MBA and they've ramped up the workoad so not only does he come straight home from work and into the study, he takes off on these intensive week-long courses leaving me at home with the kids, and that's when I lose it"

"Could he postpone the final year?" I asked

"He could, but he'd never build up the momentum to get back into it, that's the problem, so I'm grinning and bearing it, but it's so incredibly hard. For a start, my family are all in Brisbane, except Luke's parents. His parents offer no end of help, but it comes at a price and it's not worth the trouble"

"What do you mean?" asked Jan

"Well they'll look after Jake for me, overnight if I need it, but they spoil him rotten and let him get away with murder. It's okay for them because they've got him in short bursts but when they bring him back, he's really naughty, thinks he can get away with anything at home as well, and I just don't have the same time or patience his grandma has, so it makes my life much harder, in the long run, if I accept their help"

"You need cake" said Jan. "I'm getting you cake". And with that she climbed over the fence at the back of the oval and disappeared into the cafe while I listened to the rest of Kathy's story.

"What about your friends?" I asked

"Well the ones with kids are caught up in their own dramas and the ones without kids smile vacantly when I try to explain how I'm feeling. I mean, you don't understand any of this until you have a child do you? You think you understand, but you can't possibly"

"No, that's true. You can tell them, but I reckon mother nature deliberately cushions the edges of your words because otherwise nobody would ever have kids. I used to work with a girl who spent the nine months of her pregnancy stroking her tummy on a swivel chair and talking wistfully about how motherhood was going to be. She came back after the baby was born and just looked at me, and the only thing she said was Oh my God. Oh my God. And I understood immediately everything that lay behind it"

"But it's the financial side of it as much as anything. When I had Jake I took an enormous paycut to go part-time, and then I had to pay $100 a day for childcare out of what I had left. I hadn't put the two together when we were thnking about it, I mean, I knew I'd take a drop in pay and I also knew about paying for daycare, but somehow I didn't marry the two together, stupid really"

"So you're going back to work again now?" I asked

"Yeah, but with two kids in daycare, I'll have to go back full-time. So much for my principles; the second child's going into full-time daycare, something I said I'd never do. We've considered selling the house but if we get out of the housing market, we'll never get back in. We're trapped"

"Well they say it's the hardest time of your life when you have small kids" I said, though I couldn't think of a single other thing that might make her feel better.

"I just need a day off" she continued. "Just one day. Alfie wakes for a feed at 4.30am and by the time he's finished, Jake's awake for the day. I joke my life's like that film, Groundhog Day, but it's not even as funny as Groundhog Day because I end up in tears every afternoon"

"And no Bill Murray to wipe them up"

"No. I don't know, I should be grateful, it was what I wanted and some people never have kids, but God, I don't know how much longer I can cope"

"So what will you do then" I asked, "When you get this day off?"

"Oh I can dream. I'd like to go shopping for some clothes because the ones I had before don't fit me now, but there's no money for clothes, not even new underwear, you should see the knickers I'm wearing.

No, I'll just sleep and maybe just nip to the shop for teabeags or something else that seems completely impossible now. My next move is internet shopping; home grocery delivery, that would make a difference. Last week there was one afternoon I tried to make Jake some dinner and realised there wasn't a single bit of food in the house, nothing, just stale bread. I completely lost it, sat on the floor in floods of tears and eventually I resorted to phoning the in-laws and they came round with some stuff, but the trade off was like I said, Jake was a monster for the rest of the evening"

Jan returned form the cafe with banana bread. "Sorry it took me so long" she said, "I got them to toast it for you, twice as yummy. Now, where's that baby of yours, let's have a cuddle, I'm broody".

Broody? The sight of Kathy dealing with two small children is enough to make you run for the hills, and the story of her financial position makes you wonder why we bothered with the careers and the nice houses. I'm beginning to think we ought to have stuck to the washboard and mangle like our grannies did, and pop them out much earlier as well, before you know what it's really like to have a life.

Home Visits

Ella excelled herself this morning. Not content with her cock-a-doodle-doo at a quarter past five, she went on to spill an entire cup of milk across her mattress before six o'clock and spent the next fifteen minutes sitting outside our bedroom door singing the first verse of Waltzing Matilda on a loop, a change from Daisy Daisy, though I'm beginning to wish I'd never taught her the words.

Darren was out working nights, having spent seven days and nights on call for the international chopperdocs without a single tinkle on the bat phone; not even a wrong number. You might think this all sounds a bit cushy but it's actually very frustrating because there are plenty of things we'd like to do outside of Sydney but can't even contemplate while Darren has to stay near the airport. A few days on call is one thing but a full seven day run (which means 24 hours a day) is quite a limitation on your time, not to mention your freedom to have a drink.

Anyway, I dragged myself to work and after a four-shot flat white I was ready to face the day.

This morning I went out on a home visit to see my patient at Double Bay. Her mum phoned me first thing to confirm the appointment time and mention that the little girl would be at her grandparents' house in Bronte because she had to go off on important business, so did I mind going there instead?

And then she gave me the address and described where the house was and no, I had no objection at all.

One of the things I do like about my job is the opportunity to go into other people's houses. As someone who lived on a council estate until the age of ten, the tendency towards net-curtain twitching has never left me, nor has the instinctive need to know what's behind other people's nets (or blinds or any other window dressing).

My last job in the UK involved a few home visits too; one family lived with a menagerie of animals (including a flightless cockatoo that sat on the washing line) while another mother could eat an entire plate of curry and rice in front of an episode of Diagnosis Murder while I worked with her child.

And then there was Georgie. Georgie lived with his chain-smoking grandparents in a house backing directly onto the Manchester Ship Canal, the garden decked out like a Fuengerola tapas bar. It's one thing dreaming of the Costa del Sol, quite another waking up to the Thelwall viaduct, though none of this bothered his nana provided she could sit outside and dream, roughly five months of the year, weather permitting.

Here in Sydney, the patients are a bit different, not least because the services they're taking up aren't under the umbrella of the public health (NHS) system, which means they have to actively seek us out rather than sit and wait for us to contact them. The result is a caseload of kids whose family circumstances probably don't represent a cross section of the Sydney population, though even while you know this, you really begin to feel like the poor relation when you go to see them.

One of my patients, for example, lives out in an old federation house in Haberfield, a predominantly Italian area where the delicatessens sell proper parmesan and you can get a decent coffee if you pull over on the way back to the office. His parents run a business importing Italian ceramics, which means not only do they live in a stunning property, but their house is crammed with paintings and artefacts they've no room for back at the gallery.

Another of my patients comes from a long line of professional sportsmen. Her father's retired now but he's set up a business developing sports clothing and equipment and has just worked out an advertising contract with Sky Sports as well as a contract with JJB sports in the UK and some huge chain in the states. They're rich now, but going to be seriously rich sometime soon. Seriously.

The home visit in Bronte, however, was in a different league altogether. I was probably another five minutes away from the house when it dawned on me where the directions were heading me. And then I pulled up and thought no, this can't be the right place, but yeah actually, it was, so I straightened my skirt and checked my lipstick and tried not to look too much like I came from Dallam, a place these people could have absolutely no concept of.

The house was set on the cliff between the beaches at Bronte and Tamarama and from the outside it looked exactly like the type of house they'd choose as a movie location for some sort of Julie Roberts film. Set on the corner of the road, it swept around the cliff in arches of clean grey lines; three levels of plate glass windows, the glass sloping backwards to maximise the light.

"Hi I'm Sarah from the University" I said "Kristen told you I was coming?"

"Yes, yes, come in, mind the pushchair. She's asleep in here, I'll wake her up"

And with that, she disappeared into a room off the hallway while I spun around taking the place in; white marble floors, pale grey walls, Greek mosiacs on two of the walls. Blimey.

From the ground floor we climbed several flights of marble stairs until we reached the top of the house, where I tried not to gasp at the view of the Pacific and the enormous sound of the water crashing at the rocks below. The top floor was open plan; two sitting areas, a dining space and a white granite kitchen with a breakfast bar and white leather stools. One wall of the space was painted white, the rest of the room was glass. For a minute I forgot myself and stood gawping at their view; the azure of the water, the sands at Bronte and the sandstone cliffs at Tamarama; one of the greatest views in Sydney.

"It's a great spot" I eventually offered, trying not to sound impressed, as though I had houses like this myself all over the world if only I could be arsed to live in them.

"I suppose so" sighed the grandmother. "No, we're lucky, but it wasn't like this when we bought it. It was a small house on a tiny plot and you couldn't even see the ocean unless you stood up. We bought it as a deceased estate then used the shell of the place to design this"

"Do you ever get used to it?" I asked, completely unable to take my eyes off the view. "I mean, does this just become normal?"

"I don't know. I suppose so" she replied flatly, which is exactly how the mother in Haberfield replies when I admire her taste in fabrics or the 1910 cornicing in her sitting room.

It stuck me then that the lady with the Fuengerola tapas bar in Warrington is somehow happier than both these women put together. She has something to dream about, I suppose. I don't know whether these two still do, they've got it now, nothing else left to wish for. Perhaps that's the difference.

Cricket and Beer ads - III

All hail the mighty Shane Warne