Barrenjoey Lighthouse

Walking up the beach on the Pittwater side of Barrenjoey Headland - we are off up to the lighthouse you can see up there



Anna taking a break halfway up


George and Anna have a pretty frenetic social life here, and as their taxi driver I do too. Most weekends are full of sport plus extra children sleeping on put-me-ups around the house. In many respects I love having a home where children are keen to visit and where their parents feel confident that they will be well looked after, but every now and again I would like to have the house to ourselves and not share the my children with their friends. In the last couple of weeks we have had Joel, Jack, Eben, Luke, Chloe and Georgie for sleepovers - all lovely kids, but lots of noise, mess, late nights and bedlinen!

As a result, this weekend was declared a sleepover free zone, and today a family only day. This plan was greeted with a decided lack of enthusiasm from George and Anna, but Andrew and I perservered - despite feeling like the world's worst parents when fighting off requests from all corners for various apparently enormously important social events!

Having been for a great walk with Sharon and Joel on Friday to the top of the Barrenjoey Headland (Joel should have been at school but, as 6 year olds are inclined to do, he had been suffering from a mysterious ailment in the morning, of which by lunch time he had been miraculously cured...), we thought it would be fun to do the walk again with the children, have a look around the lighthouse, and then retire to the beach.

We started the morning with a fun game I have invented called tidying up the house. I am the only person who is keen on this game, but Andrew and the children reluctantly joined in. It involves going methodically from room to room collecting all the things which belong to you, and then returning them to your room. I follow with a black sack getting everyone to pick up bits of rubbish. The final stage is to go to your room and tidy that up. Can't understand why everyone was so negative about it myself....and of course we wouldn't have to play the game IF EVERYONE PUT EVERYTHING BACK IN THE RIGHT PLACE IN THE FIRST PLACE. I know women across the world are nodding their heads in agreement...

Anyway - back to our lovely family day...

Barrenjoey Headland is the rocky outcrop at the end of the Palm Beach peninsula with Pittwater on one side and the ocean on the other. You will have seen it in the opening credits on Home and Away, if you ever watch it, because the programme is filmed there. It's 350 feet about sea level, and is therefore a pretty steep walk up steps hewn out of the rock to get there. Although it is tiring - especially in the heat - the view when you get to the top is plenty rewarding enough to make it worthwhile. You can see all the way up the central coast in one direction, and in the other you can make out Centrepoint Tower in Sydney city centre. We went on the tour of the lighthouse and found out that the tower and the buildings had been built by convicts, who had dragged great chunks of sandstone up there for the construction. Given that it was tough carrying nothing but a water bottle, I reckon that was quite an achievement!



George has spotted a big lizard. We are told there are (highly venomous) brown snakes up there too!




At the top, looking over to the beautiful beaches of the Central Coast

After that, we retired to 'Carmel's Cafe' on the jetty on Pittwater - where the seaplanes set off from - for refreshments and then went over to the beach on the ocean side to cool off. Andrew and the children went in with their bodyboards and I watched anxiously from the edge of the water. I still find it difficult to relax when George and Anna are in the water, even when Andrew is there. The more I see 'Bondi Rescue' on the tv, the more I realise how treacherous the sea really is, although I accept that George and Anna rarely go in above their waists and always between the flags and are really not ever in any danger. In the end, I decided that the best thing was to take myself back to our stuff and read my magazine, on the grounds that what the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't grieve over...

Despite the dodgy start, and the initial muted commitment to the idea, family day was announced a success, and it was agreed that it should happen at least once a month. Disappointingly, no one wanted to make the tidying up game a regular thing. Funny that.

You will all be pleased to know that for the last couple of weeks, the weather has been glorious - consistently hovering around 30 degrees, and without a cloud in the sky. We are keeping our fingers crossed for the bank holiday weekend when we are going camping....perhaps you could cross yours for us too!



Taken from the top of the lighthouse, looking along the Barrenjoey Headland back towards Palm Beach, with the ocean on the left and Pittwater on the right. You can see the jetty where the seaplanes go from, and where we had our refreshments