Sydney airport again

We were back at the airport again today and very early! Sue, Caroline and I got up at 4.30 am and had a lovely quiet drive across the bridge and city to get to the airport at 5.15 ready to meet Caroline's two best friends from the UK, Sophie and Sophia - they are also our first visitors from the UK.

Their plane arrived on time and they made it out through customs by 5.45, just as the sun was coming up for a lovely sunny day. The girls looked like they had coped with the long flight well and we drove back to the house through the early morning traffic, arriving home just as Laura and Rebecca were getting up. It is still a school day so Caroline went in for the morning, which gave the new arrivals a chance to have a sleep.

The girls are here for just over 2 weeks, but will be going to stay with Sophia's Aunt & Uncle for 4 days next week - while Caroline is still at school - before returning to us for the Easter holidays. Caroline is, of course, very excited to have her friends here at last and has lots of things planned to keep them entertained and show them around.

Training course at Yamba

I've just returned from the airport again - this time it was the domestic terminal for a flight to Coffs Harbour, 1 hour up the coast. This was for a training day that I was running for a company near Yamba, on the Clarence River, who operate a series of regional community and tourism websites, as well as their own camping & caravan site.

Sue drove me to the airport on Tuesday afternoon and I took the short flight north, although found myself sitting on the wrong side of the plane, with a view of the ocean rather than the NSW coastline! I was collected by the customer at Coffs Harbour and then had a 1.5 hour drive to Yamba, where they were putting me up in one of the cabins on the campsite. Since time was tight, I started the training that evening for the 5 people who were attending and finished about 9.30.

We had an 8am start today, but I took the chance to walk across the camping grounds to the river first thing, past a group of grazing kangaroos. The camp site was very quiet at this time of year and the whole area was very rural and peaceful in the morning sunshine, plus the river was impressively wide - one of the largest in the country. The training session then continued until 1.30 when I was driven back to the airport for the afternoon flight back to Sydney, where I was lucky to have a good view of the harbour this time as we came in to land against the setting sun.

Sue was there to meet me outside arrivals and we had a slower journey back across the city at rush hour. We've now got a day off before heading back to the airport first thing on Friday to collect Caroline's friends who are leaving the UK shortly.

Back to Oz
I arrived back in Sydney on Friday evening after another long flight but didn't feel quite so tired after this one as I managed to get a good rest on the first leg to Singapore and am now quite quickly back into Sydney time (plus having the benefit of an extra hour last night with the clock changes). Sue and the girls were there to meet me at the airport, which was great, and then Sue bravely tackled the roads and tunnels back to Forestville!

Saturday was a day of rest for most of us, which was lucky since the temperature was in the high 30's for most of the day and so another change from the snow I'd experienced on the last morning in Maidenhead. I managed to stay awake for the evening when Sue and I drove into Sydney to see Ardal O'Hanlon's stand-up show at the Seymour Theatre - funny, but he didn't reach the levels of being as 'gut-wrenchingly' funny as we were perhaps expecting.

Today's seen another change in the weather with heavy rain overnight and the temperature back down to the low 20s. Another quiet day catching up on the newspaper and gearing up for a busy week.

Back in the UK
I'm just coming to the end of a quick week's visit to the UK which has combined visits to family, friends and business. It's certainly been a full week and with a few disrupted nights of sleep I'm not yet fully on UK time.

The trip started last Thursday when Sue drove me to Sydney airport for an afternoon departure in clear sunny weather - there's some photos from the take-off here. I had a good, but long, flight via Singapore and Lesley was at Heathrow to meet me at 5am on Friday morning. I then spent a couple of days with Mum & Dad (which included a cold windswept walk to view the Cheltenham Gold Cup race from Cleeve Hill), before heading to Crowborough via a night in Maidenhead.

I then had 3 days in the office, catching up on progress there with the team and making a start on planning the budget for the coming financial year. I also had the opportunity to meet a number of friends in the town which was good to catch up on news. However, it's also been a strange week to have been back here without Sue and the girls, who are carrying on with the normal life back in Sydney. They've been lucky (or not) to miss the cold weather and some snow flurries!

Last Sunday Sue, Caroline and Rebecca took part in the 75th Anniversary for the Harbour Bridge, which was closed to traffic, allowing 200,000 people to walk across during the day. There are some photos here - it looked quite a sight with all the free caps being worn by the walkers and Sue said that the bridge was eerily quiet without the usual roar of 8 lanes of traffic.

6 months in
This evening marks 6 months from when we landed in early Spring last year. The first signs of Autumn are also starting to appear, with a slight chill some mornings although the days are still warm and sunny. By all accounts we got off lightly this summer as the temperatures didn't reach over 40c and we've generally found it to be very comfortable. It's been great not to have to wear a sweater (or socks!) for such a long time, but that may start to change over the next few months as we head towards 'winter'.

I'm probably going to have to dust off a few sweaters for my week's trip back to the UK this Thursday, although it sounds like the arrival of Spring there has brought some warmer (and drier) weather too. It doesn't feel like I'm going in the next few days since Sue and the girls aren't packing and getting excited about the trip, but I should start thinking about it soon!

Social Barbie
We held our first social BBQ at the house last night, having invited over the parents of 2 of Rebecca's new friends from school. One set of parents are Australian and the others were Brits who had arrived several months after us and are on a similar type of visa.

They arrived at 5pm, which gave the girls a chance to swim in the pool for an hour, and we all sat outside until it got dark and the mossies began to be a pain. We then all moved indoors and had a good evening of chat until midnight - very successful evening and we hope to see more of both couples again.

Caroline was away for the evening as she'd gone with one of her friends & family several hours out of Sydney to stay overnight on a working farm. Don't know yet where it is but should be a different experience for her!

Sue's new job
Sue started her new job yesterday, working one day a week at a girl's private secondary school in nearby Chatswood to help the Home Economics staff prepare for their lessons. She had a good day and found the staff (and students) very welcoming, although as this is a new position the school is still finding their way with this job, so she had some quiet spells with little to do.

Sue has to go to the local shops to buy in the food that's needed for the week and then sort out the storage in the new classroom area. She also helped out during one of the classes in the afternoon, which she enjoyed and this is possibly an area of the job that can be developed.

Also yesterday, Laura went off for her 3-day camp with her year which will probably be a very sociable few days, regardless of the wet weather that's forecast. She's gone to a different place to Rebecca last week - this time to an activity centre to the south of Sydney.

Mardi Gras & Pool Party
It's been a hot weekend, with the temperature in the 30's, but broken in the evening by another spectacular electrical storm over the city with flashes lighting up the sky every few seconds.

On Saturday evening, Sue and I caught the train into the city for the Mardi Gras Parade - the annual gay and lesbian event which runs along Oxford Street in the south of the city centre. This reportedly attracts around half a million people and marks the end of the month long festival.

By the time we got there the crowds were quite deep, with many bringing (or buying) plastic crates or stools to stand on, so we didn't have much of a view! The parade lasted about an hour, starting off with lots of motorbikes revving and cruising down the street, followed by a large number of floats (such as this Trojan horse) and marching groups. Some of these floats were very impressive, many were pumping out loud disco music and there were lots of flamboyant participants, egged on by the cheering crowd. It was an interesting spectacle and one to experience!

Sunday afternoon was taken up by Caroline's pool party - she had invited 13 girl friends from school and they all had a lot of noisy fun in the pool. We're sure the neighbours were pleased when 7pm arrived and peace descended again!