Coogee rain

We've had heavy rain and strong winds in Sydney since Sunday. It's created a few dramas for us and for the last of the Christmas-New Year  holiday makers - and we were worried it might put a dampener on our Sunday in Coogee with Joel and Kay.

Ever the newsman...Joel took these amazing shots on the beach during a brief break in the afternoon's downpours.......

We'd had lunch at our fave Fujiyama and then took shelter in the crazy, noisy, crowded Pavillion while the rain poured down outside most of the afternoon. We found a square metre of unoccupied space right beside two tables of film industry types which made it fun for celebrity spotting.  That is Alex Dimitriades, partly obscured by the person in the white hat, sitting at the left of this picture!   

Maxie, being the great woman in a crisis that she is, was running back to the apartment at this stage of the deluge (in a $2 blue plastic poncho and Joel's thongs) to rescue all the electronic devices that were sitting on a table under a window we had left partly open in optimistic disregard of the gathering storm clouds.

We celebrated Joel and Kay's last night in Australia with a pre dinner Majella toast and then dinner at Barzura's. There was a lot to talk about - it's a big year ahead for them and we're so lucky to be able to share some parts of it with this gorgeous couple.

The last two days we've found some fun things to do while trying to avoid (not always successfully) the rain and wind. Today we saw the "What a Life! Rock photography by Tony Mott" exhibition at the wonderful old State Library of NSW gallery in Macquarie Street and then a screening of "Joy" at our favourite Randwick Ritz theatre in St Paul's Street.  There's never any shortage of things to do in Sydney - even when the weather turns bad.