Storms and floods

Yet again a month has passed, and I haven’t got round to updating this site. Still blaming it on Facebook though! Anyway, it isn’t as though I haven’t been doing anything – life in Bondi (and the rest of the places I’ve been visiting) continues to be good – even in the torrential rain that has been a feature of the past month. There were floods on the Central Coast and in the Hunter Valley, in which 9 people died, and even here the weather was pretty severe – six-foot pounding surf etc, and so much wind that half the beach got blown into the skate park at Bondi:



But a few weeks ago, it still felt like summer. We headed down to Jervis Bay, about 3 hours south of Sydney, for a weekend away with friends. There were 12 of us, and we rented a big house right by the beach, for a weekend of barbecuing on the balcony, and marvelling at the fact that we were swimming in the ocean instead of wearing the woolly hats and gloves that we’d brought with us. Walked to Hyam’s Beach one day, which is apparently in the Guinness Book of Records for having the whitest sand in the world. Looked it up when we got back to the house (which conveniently had the 2007 edition), but couldn’t find it. The sand was ridiculously white though!





Had a great dinner at a restaurant in the middle of a forest – part of Paperbark Camp Ecolodge, and then finished off the evening in the Husky Pub, dancing to some interesting tunes (in my case), or knocking back tequila in order to be able to cope with the tunes (in Alex’s).

Back in Sydney, we’ve been enjoying the end of the main bbq season with mates, went to see The View play at the Metro Theatre (and got extremely drunk in the process), seen ‘Shrek 3’ and ‘Death at a Funeral’ at the cinema (both good), and helped Dom and Julie move house, using the trusty ute, of course. And went to Marcus and Nance’s engagement party in Manly, which was cool.

We’ve also been booking holidays, and will be heading to Queenstown in New Zealand for a week’s snowboarding in August and then to the Northern Territory in October for 2 weeks! We’re going to go and see Uluru, rent a 4wd and drive to King’s Canyon and the Olgas and then through the outback to Alice Springs, from where we will be catching The Ghan train up to Darwin, from where we’re going to go and explore Kakadu National Park – can’t wait!

So that’s about it. I’m still swimming in the ocean – got my new wetsuit a couple of weeks ago and it makes a big difference. The surf yesterday was ridiculous, so we were swimming parallel to the beach, in the white water – there wasn’t a single surfer out, as the wind would have made it impossible to paddle out. Lots of fun though!