Australia Day Weekend

Well, what an action packed week. It included the Australia Day public holiday (on Thursday) and we went to stay with friends Steve & Sue at their newly completed beach house in Narrawallee, near Ulladulla / Milton, on the coast, three hours south of Sydney.

This is a photo of the view from the back of the house, down through a marvelous stand of gum trees to Narrawallee beach.

David enjoyed himself very much, despite having some serious competition in the cuteness stakes from Steve & Sue's new Maltese Terrier puppy, Jack. I have included a photo of David playing on the floor while Jack watches. Jack has just been, very carefully, licking David's foot. David was very interested in Jack, and the older Maltese, Molly, and they were both very gentle with him. David's toys, on the other hand, were at times hard to distinguish from puppy toys, so we had to be careful not to leave them unattended.

We had a lovely time. David travelled very well, again. I sat in the back seat with him both ways, but slept for quite long stretches. On Friday night we had pizza in Milton and listened to local musicians playing guitar, base and digeridoo - loud, live and David slept through most of it.

There was a great barbeque on Saturday night, with Steve & Sue's neighbours, David and Dawn, their son Hamish, his wife and two daughters coming along, with a visitor from the USA (Ruthie) included. All lovely people, who we all enjoyed meeting. Again, the girls probably thought that Jack the puppy was cuter than David. The evening saw another memorable first for David - his first bagpipes concert! Hamish plays the bagpipes professionally in a band called Brother, mostly in the USA of six months of every year. (The official Brother website is www.brothermusic.com and worth a look) We were lucky enough to get an impromptu concert, with a medley of traditional pipe songs, some reels and (of course) the bagpipe riff from "It's a Long way to the Top". David was quite interested and definitely happy throughout. David definitely has eclectic and good musical taste, because the only thing that made him very upset all weekend was Steve's vocal sing along on "Proud Mary" on Friday night.

I had two lovely swims in the rolling surf - salty and very energising. I had almost forgotten just how different it is to swimming in a pool - lots of salt and that feeling of sand in the bathers! Just about the best part though was the sound of the ocean. Great for sleeping!