Messing around on boats...

On the rock in the centre of this picture there is actually a goana that's about 4 feet long, but in my hesitation about getting too close, I seem to have taken a picture where you can't really see it....so the picture above is one from someone elses blog that I found on the web!

The top of the cliffs at Refuge Bay - with our motor cruiser just above Anna's head and my shoulder!

George, me and Anna on Refuge Beach

George and Anna in the waterfall at Refuge Bay

George, Anna and Andrew on the jetty at Patonga Bay - note the pelicans on the street lamps!

Our two beautiful children enjoying a trip out in the dinghy

Are we nearly there yet? Enjoying (!) a climb through the bush to try to find the top of the waterfall

Cowan Creek

George's new favourite hobby - fishing!

Me - driving the cruiser

Refuge Bay

One of George's first catches!

So here we are - back from our 4 day holiday cruising the Hawkesbury River, which is less of a river and more of a series of inland salt water ways surrounded by National Park. You can see from the photos how beautiful and relaxing it was, but you would never guess it only took 30 mins to get there. One of the really extraordinary things about Sydney is how short a distance you need to go before being in the middle of nowhere. Most of the places we visited were only accessible by boat.

It's difficult not to relax when the hot day ends with pitch dark by 6.30pm and all there is left to do is go to bed! And we were getting up not long after 6am, when the water was like a mirror and the fish biting. The only bit I didn't like was how stressful it was putting the anchor down for people like us who are not boaties and we were always pretty overjoyed if we managed to hook up to a buoy instead!

The children and Andrew really enjoyed their new found interest in fishing, and some 10 fish were caught - we think they were tailor fish and one bream - although we were not sure! We put them all back anyway - no chance of eating them after Anna has given them a name and begged us to take them home as pets! Besides which, we wouldn't know where to start with gutting them etc!

I read three books and enjoyed sunbathing and watching the sights - sea eagles whirling above us then diving down to catch fish, pelicans, huge shoals of enormous jelly fish (eurgh), giant spiders (also eurgh), and just the tranquility of it all. We definitely think we would like to do it again.

We've been back a couple of hours now, having collected our new car (which it seems is silver rather than a goldy colour) and I still feel like I am rocking slightly on a boat. This isn't helped by the fact that I still have a rotten cold and had trouble sleeping on the boat due to all the coughing. Anna is still all bunged up too, and all this is particularly galling when the weather has been so fabulous. If this is autumn......wow....However, we are expecting to catch lots of little viruses until we have built up some resistance to Australian bugs.

I think that is all for this update, except to note that a message has just popped up on my screen relating to my virus software which said

"Test could not be started because it already does not exist"

If any of you have any idea what that might mean, we'd be very grateful for enlightenment...