Weather Check. Happy ducks, delirious Shepherds

We have had a couple of bucket loads of rain recently and Wet play duty in Australia is not fun. The clever playground designers have made a playground which gives a 95% chance of a fractured skull if anything more than a drizzle descends. The picture below is supposed to capture another downpour but fails miserably to do so. I've put it in nevertheless as it reflects the morning routine as we sit ourselves by the big window at the side of David and Michelle's house and enjoy the view. It's harder to do on wet days though as I think British children are somehow able to cope( for some reason) with wet weather days than their Australian counterparts. So on days like this you know it's going to be a tough one.


So you get back home, start to wind down and look back out of the window. Now when David and Michelle first came over we shared with them how lovely it was to walk to the end of the drive and watch the ships go down Southampton water. I'm not sure how impressed they were by this concept but the answer is probably "not very" when they get evenings like this over here. I suppose we ought to save "exciting" sunset shots until we get to Uluru (That's Ayers Rock for the non PC amongst you) though.

Exploring day near Nelsons Bay.

So here we are waiting for the kids to get off yet another bloody bouncy castle! We were out at Nelsons Bay and looking at the info on the wonderful cruises that take you out Whale or dolphin watching. Chris had that " One more photo and I'll deck you" look. The dinner menus look great so we now fancy an evening of eating fish, as opposed to watching them...oh, is that awful?



We drove up to a lookout point near Nelsons bay. I think the beach in the distance is the nudist beach.



Just down the road from Soldiers Point....isn't my hair growing? Oh bum more bluebottles!



These little play areas are everywhere....there should be an award for the best slide view! Or should I say "slippery dip" as they are called in Australia.

If only That's life were still on....

"Well Esther a Mr. Chappell from Warners Bay New South Wales sent us this rather amusing sign that he saw on the way back from the beach."



(Cue disproportionately loud laughter and cut to gratuitously large teeth shot.)
"Well Cyril what do you make out of that?"
(Cut to very slimy looking man in leather armchair)
"I'm not sure Esther but I bet you'd like it whichever way you had it."
(Cue complete hysterics from Studio audience)

They don't make them like that anymore



Meanwhile on the topic of Food and Love. A belated thankyou to Paul (The one in Stourbridge not Hythe) who after I informed him that I was missing my Marmite then sent me a food parcel from the other side of the World. If anyone else is feeling equally charitable Whiskey is pretty expensive over here and Tina is missing her horlicks Hot Chocolate ( She says it's Purple and you can only buy it in Waitrose) Oh well if you don't ask you don't get. Don't worry if you got her the wrong one because even she couldn't take it back to the shop.

Jessica's Swimming Carnival.

All across Australia, schools declare on their outside notice boards, when their Swimming Carnival is; the whole school then invades a local pool, usually for the whole day; Jessica's school had to go all the way to Swansea as all the local ones were being used.
Anyway, before Jessica's carnival we thought she might like a practise so we went to nearby Lampton pool; we enjoyed an afternoon of timed 50m lengths( the first time we had been in a 50m pool, I think) and we loved the 2 man tyre ride. Alex insisted on joining a queue to go off the diving board; he kept on asking if he should do a backward somersalt, like some of the others; I was relieved when he opted for a star jump, as it meant I could get away with a little bounce and jump!



Carnival Day! Flying in to action for the front crawl.I was impressed how Jessica kept on entering races...no matter where she came! I tried not to be competitive mum, shouting frantically from the side!



A beautiful backstroke was eventually rewarded with 3rd place( out of 7).

Not as scary as they look!

Our first Huntsman spider came in to the house for a visit.....believe me, I wasn't smiling when I first saw it clinging to the wall...(but I didn't swear) ; of course it doesn't look so big under the tupperware container...but it was...honestly... a really big hairy, scary whopper, which I was very calm about catching, because I was infront on the children!



Jellyfish: Stingers or Blue Bottles(when Chris was first told about Blue bottles, he wondered what all the fuss was about; how annoying can flies be?)...well they are a rather spiteful little jelly fish which stings like a bee and the pain lasts for about 30 minutes!
When the life guards first announced there had been a few stings it took us about 20 minutes to pluck up the courage to go into the sea, as the risk was very minimal at that stage; we eventually reasoned that we don't stop going outside incase we get stung by a bee, do we?
Having just put a link in on here(click on blue bottles/highlighted at the top) I was surprised that the Blue Bottle is also called the Portuguese Man of War or 'Branman', in Danish! Why do they look so much bigger in Europe? These ones we saw were often only the size of a bee!



The sign looks dramatic and as more came in to shore , on the afternoon tide, the sign was moved forward and we were told there had suddenly been 15 stings in the last 5 minutes!!! At that point we decided we had enjoyed our beach outing but it was time to leave!


Just on another related theme of being stung.......we got a letter saying about another speeding fine...from a camera... as part of the same journey as the other one!!!!( I can't believe I v'e been stung twice!!! It's so unfair as I've been so good at sticking to the speed limits since!)

Entranced at the Entrance

Portsmoth, Bath, Dartmoor. It seems back in England that David and Michelle are severely outravelling us. The South of England will be well and truly done by April. Our weekend travels are currently far less ambitious. today it was a one hour trip to the town where Lake Tuggerah goes into the sea. The town therefore has the unoriginally original title of The Entrance.



lovely spot for a picnic. Tina thinks we all look very pensive in this shot as we ate our ham and cheese filled pita breads. It looks more like Jessica and Alex are bored stiff but the view out to sea was very pleasant, the nearby rock pools were good to explore and Tina got disproportionately excited at the shells she saw.


The original thing about this (oh no another blooming beach shot) is that it is essentially the estuary at low tide. Like the bogey hole there were a myriad of reasons we were given for not being in here (collapsing sandbanks, variable depths, dangerous currents) but I think you'll agree that Jessica and Alex are not in a life threatening situation here. Unless the girl behind them had a big carving knife.


Lying in Estuaries and rock pools is not the U.S.P. of The Entrance. The main reason for people coming here, including us, is the Pelican feeding everyday at 3:30pm. We got a front row seat for this spectacle. The mad scramble for the fish they are given even involves chewing each others bills off if necessary it seems.



Here they are again in more patient mood, another fascinating Australian Wildlife encounter.

Books what I've read

Crappiest thing about being a teacher?
1. Parents who want to blame everything from the holocaust to the hole in the Ozone Layer on you.
2. Planning
Below is my life support system for the next few weeks. As I try to get my head round discovering the differences between outcomes, indicators, modules, units and syllabuses these are the books that I am sifting through for information and ideas. Well apart from the one in the middle "The Time Travellers Wife" which I've just finished after two months; I really am a slow reader. A bit of a chick's book really.
" Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high wire walker the only real thing through this strange life of mine that I could ever trust."

You get the picture . Anyway in a quest to balance this out with some full on testosterone filled literature I am now onto "The World According to Clarkson" I am sure this too will have its pitfalls but it still beats "New South Wales Foundation Handwriting Year 4" as a book at bedtime.

Soccer or Footie?

We ended our weekend by going to the final Newcastle Jet's soccer game.
Unfortunately, once again we were not a lucky omen for our local team , who were beaten 3-1.
It was a nice family atmosphere; notice the areas behind each goal...they were just like 'Henman Hill', at Wimbledon, with people sat on the grass, walls and their own chairs, with picnics and beer!
All very relaxed and civilized. We sat in the stands to get a better view. A couple of unfortunate aspects were being a brand new league/ team the depth and passion was not quite there. A football match is not the same unless the referee is being called something which relates to their personal habits. The other downer as far as Chris was concerned is that being called the "Jets" it meant that whenever they entered or did something worthwhile we had to endure Paul McCartney and Wings at full blast.

Bogey hole, Newcastle.

What's green, wet and slimy and things come out of it?
.....well, that's why I thought it was called a bogey hole.!!
Anyway, when Chris first found out about the exchange , he looked up Newcastle on the web and the first thing it talked about was the bogey hole....so, we had to see it!
It was an overcast, windy day and Alex didn't want to get out of the car to walk down to see it....well he was the most annimated about it! He loved the way the waves crashed on the rocks, which he described as 'water fireworks' (infact he thought it was better than all the fireworks we had seen so far!)
We also saw 5 dolphins surfing in the waves.(not in the bogey hole)...which was a wonderful sight!(I didn't get a photo of that...sorry!)



We returned the next sunny day to swim in the bogey hole.....yes that big wave did get us!(but you can't get swept out in the hole!)
Yes, the steps were slimy and green, but the sea water was frequently changed, as you can see!



Yes, we did see the sign...please don't panic mums and dads! (Chris made me go in first to check it out!!!)

Weekend jaunts!

I spent over an hour yesterday writing an entertaining blog...which then crashed on me! I can't possibly remember all my little gems ...I feel I've lost an essay...so apologies if this blog is not as good as my first efforts.....just imagine how good it was, please!

Maitland Gaol.

This place obviously appealed to Chris and his interest in the macabre and serial killers. It really was a fascinating place and I can't believe it only closed in 1998...so it had an eerie feeling of some history being far too recent....we walked into cells where murderers had been only 8 years ago! It showed prison life and conditions dating right back to the mid 1800s; our guide was a jolly chap who delighted in telling tales to scare the children and us! He appologised for one cell block that he showed us which stank of beer; he said that a rather rowdy party had been staying in there the night before and they were still clearing up. ( the funny thing about this was that when Chris went to school on Monday, one of the other members of staff said she had been to a surprise venue hen night......guess where? Chris teased her although she declared it had been the other, boys group! (oh, yeah!)


We warned them not to misbehave!!

Lost in more ways than one

We will not conform to the "Actually we don't watch much television" school of philosophy. we will watch any old rubbish and with Australian television at the moment that isn't hard. The programmes are fine at times but the adverts are annoyingly frequent in the extreme. Anyway back to the theme of the post.....



The above picture will mean nothing unless you are into it but we were most pleased to see Lost Season two starting over here. Very strange things down that hole you know. Anyway for non addicts you may at least be interested to know that Tina was so excited about the new series she had the car on Thursday and got completely lost trying to pick me up after school. We got a call at Glendore an hour after she was due to pick me up from a hotel about 4 minutes away. The mobile had been left at home and map reading was just too obvious a thing to do as Tina kept thinking she knew where she was and then asked for directions and ended up at "Glendale" rather than "Glendore" which was 5km in the opposite direction........... bless

So who has the worst route to school?

One week in and the hottest debate in the Chappell household was not a comparitive study of the English and Australian Education system but who has the crappiest route to school. Tina's case:





Well here we are. Lake Macquarie Council have just invented a brand new concept. It's called..... a footpath. The trouble is having spent 6 weeks working on some vastly more important project they decide to start work on the same day as the school's start back. All is quiet and still in this early evening shot but with two schools within 500 yards of each other this junction is a complete mare on school days. To get to the crossing patrol you had to walk out into the middle of the road.


Well here is the walk home. Admittedly very pleasant in a "neighbours" sort of way but the hill is deceiving and one of about five that have to be dealt with. after a hot day and with two sweaty children carrying bags about half their own size , it's a long trek. Tina will be cracking Walnuts with her thighs next Christmas! Luckily she is enjoying the detour along the Lake with her bike after dropping the children off.



Right that is Tina. Now for heaven's sake do not let anyone related to the ministry of Transport see this picture. Here is one of the biggest fine earners in Australia and as you know we can ill afford to pay anymore. Apparently the police tried to make loads of money by getting their cameras out on the first day of term but as 98% of schools had a "pupil free" day many appeals were succesfully made.Chris has 6 of these to deal with on the way to work. He tries to be a studious teacher and arrive before 8 and leave after 4 but school finishes at 2:45 and with rain all day Tuesday (first day back) and 43 degrees on Thursday you sometimes just want to get home. For blog purposes only (although Chris is also that sad) he also counted 11 traffic lights and 6 roundabouts on his drive home too. Having read about Tina's effort to drive the route it is clear that Chris has the raw deal.