Sydney Cath & Davey

London Cath and Davey arrived back in Sydney after a quiet start to their Australian adventure at Sandy Beach and Coffs Harbour (last week). All the Canberra based family joined them this weekend for two days of getting back in touch, introducing Cath to some of the sights of Sydney and time for all the thirtysomethings to enjoy the ACDC Concert at Homebush on Saturday night while the fiftysomethings were on hand to babysit.


First stop on Saturday morning was Circular Quay to catch the ferry to Manly. I thought I was very clever to capture 4 Australian icons in this photo (Ollie, his Uncle Davey, the Bridge and the Opera House).

Ollie and Angie found Davey's capacity to relate ALL the Star Wars movie plotlines absolutely mesmerising. They kept begging him to "tell us again", until he'd exhausted all the known scripts and had to start making up his own versions.

The ferry was crowded with tourist day trippers from the International cruise ship berthed at Circular Quay but the (mainly older) crowd had thinned out by the time we'd walked the Corso to Manly Beach, which looked beautiful on this perfect Sydney summer day.

We enjoyed a superb lunch at a Bistro along the esplanade, and family talk time while Rob and I supervised the kids at an amazing toy shop we found up a side road from the beach.

This photo is of Jody and Cath walking back to the ferry down the Manly Corso...proving that summer fashion style is very similar whether you're from London or Canberra.

On the very same walk Ella spied these shoes (the pink ones) on display in "Hype". She scooted into the shop and sat down on the floor in front of them and just gazed at them for a few minutes, until other styles and colours caught her attention. We think two and a half years is very young to be displaying a shoe fetish.

But it didn't stop her joining in with the boys in their light sabre games - their current fetish.

Ferry rides are a great opportunity to catch up with some reading.

....and for Ollie to start researching his next morning talk topic.

The girls were getting excited by now about their big night out at the ACDC Concert, especially Jody and Claire who don't get out much at night these days.

At this stage we were just trying to keep the kids as docile and bored as possible so they wouldn't have any meltdowns when their Mummies and Daddies left.

No matter that the young things had a HUGE night out LOVING the Concert, the Japanese food and all the other delights of their time together, we still had to get up early this morning, check out of the hotel by 10.00am and get across the Harbour again in time for lunch at Athol Hall off Bradley's Head Road just a few inlets around from Taronga Zoo, in Mosman.

Lunch extended over three hours, in this tranquil setting in busy buzzy Sydney; beautiful food, beautiful views, so much happiness and contentment from family having time together again.

Everyone loves spending time with Cath. We are so amazed that she has to work while she is here...but that work involves shopping...for clothes.....!!!...but not today.

Of course the huge expanse of grass (and shade and trees) around Athol Hall was a source of delight for the kids. At one point Ella just had to practise her new "panky face" which she's just learnt to do when she feels cranky about any real or imagined slight.

It disappears just as quickly though especially when her favourite cousins do something "punny".

When we selected Athol Hall for our special Davey & Cath Sunday in Sydney lunch we didn't realize that Cath has a thing for kookaburras. We had a treefull of them just a metre or two from our table providing a non stop backdrop of cute poses, lazy bird sounds and greedy feeding of any crumbs thrown to them.

We ended a wonderful afternoon with a Ring A Ring A Rosie, which Ella never wanted to end.

Which is what we all felt about our time together with Davey & Cath in Sydney.