A weekend away

It's the school holidays here in Canberra, so we piled the kids in the car and drove up to Sydney for the weekend. We stay with old friends on the northern beaches, so it's about a four hour drive. Our friends have two boys as well, much the same ages, so we had a lovely time drinking and talking and shouting at the children to let us drink and talk in peace.



Saturday was both number one son's birthday AND the most torrential rain to hit Sydney in months ... but we'd promised him an outing so we went to the big IMAX at Darling Harbour near the centre of Sydney. It was awesome, if a bit damp. And when it's your birthday you can have icecream even though it's 18 degrees and bucketing.



After lunch my husband took them to the aquarium while I did a bit of gentle window shopping in Sydney's CBD. To my country-mouse eyes it was insanely crowded, and I didn't buy anything except a lotto ticket, but always nice to have a potter around somewhere different. I love big cities, but don't like people in my personal space. I think I need footmen to keep the peasants away as I walk amongst them. Actually when I win lotto ($50 million superdraw) that can probably be arranged.

On Sunday the rain had cleared and the sun was out, so we went down our friends' local beach. It was closed because of the bad weather the day before. I thought it was closed because of dangerous surf - doesn't it look dangerous?



But it wasn't. It's closed because after heavy rain all the run-off comes down through the houses and the streets and the drains into the streams and out into the main creek and pollutes the beach. So that would be that filthy polluting creek right there, with my children in it...