Wednesday, November 15, 2006

So much

There's been a crapload happen since my last post.

To start with - we went down to Mollymook for a couple of days. We stayed at a very nice little place about 200m from Mollymook surf beach and spent a couple of days doing not much.

From the beginning ....

Grandma, Uncle G and his smiling friend (LGR's name - not my name) came down for dinner on Thursday evening. We had some food and some wine and a nice old time. Grandma stayed but unfortunately Uncle G and his fried had to go home. I suspect they wanted to come to Mollymook with us but there were some time constraints.

On Friday morning we all got up, dressed and headed off at about 08:30. The first planned step was at Mt Gibraltar (aka Mittagong) but for some reason I couldn't find the lookout I was after. So we kept going thru to Fitzroy Falls.

This was a nice chance to get out and stretch the legs. LGR and Hayzey were suitably awed, and scared, by the enormous drop from the first lookout we got to. There's a steel grate at the edge of the lookout and nobody really wanted to walk on it. Hayzey got game quite quickly but I had enormous issues with even being on the lookout. For those who've been there might be some appreciation of why this is so.

Next was a quick trip down a very steep and windy road to Kangaroo Valley. We had some morning tea and then did a spot of venturing down the main street. I came across a fantastic little store selling imported things from all throughout Asia. We ended up buying the most magnificent photo albums and a few pressies for some folks. I have a very strong suspicion we'll be back at this place.

From here we went straight to Mollymook - and our little holiday house at Mollymook. The first impressions were very favourable (and time showed us they were also very accurate). We dumped our stuff and did a quick explore before heading out for some lunch and some groceries.

One shopping trip later and we were back 'home' unpacking, and then off to the beach. There was some initial trepidation from the kids but this disappeared quite quickly. We played some nice games of running away from the water and digging tunnels. I went for a run on the beach and we all got generally acquainted with the environment.

When we got back home we were enthralled by a couple of very bold rainbow lorrikeets - which quickly turned out to be pests. In the end we had to rush them off the deck because they were eating the food of Hayzey's hands ...

Not much else happened. We had dinner and went to bed.

Saturday was a sparkling day. After a massive breakfast we set out to find some water and nice sand. After a couple of false starts we found somewhere quite nice - although LGR and I managed to find somewhere even nicer just up the beach. We planned to go there in the afternoon but this never happened ....

Lunch consisted of a play in the nearby park and some fish and chips. Quite good too. Then the clouds came. And the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees. So we went for a drive to get some fresh fish for dinner. Wouldn't you know it? The shop we ended up at was owned by the guy who lived next door to the house we were staying at. Interesting ....

The only other thing of note on the Saturday was a nice 90 minute walk along the beach. We didn't take swimmers because we thought it was too cold. This obviously meant the kids both got soaked. In the end LGR had my shirt on (his was too wet) and I was wandering the streets of Mollymook mostly naked hugging Hayzey to stop her getting too cold.

Sunday wasn't much of an improvement. The weather was overcast and sometimes it looked like clearing up but in the end it just rained. We managed a trip to the markets at Ulladulla and picked up some more nice little pressies for people. The venture was cut short by rain ...

So we decided to head home. In the end we only left about an hour earlier than we had originally planned so we didn't miss much. We were thinking about stopping at Berry but in the end decided to skip it and have lunch at Kiama. Not a smart decision (in hindsight). We couldn't find anywhere that appealed to us and could fit us in so we had pies in the park while the kids played.

It was a good little trip. I wish it was longer but there just wasn't enough time. We'll be back though.