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We have had the most torrential and consistent rain over the past few days.  Yesterday, being Anzac Day, I was not at work and I went into the garage to do some work on my bike.  I discovered the garage had about 3 inches of water on the floor.

So I spent the next couple of hours trying to stem the flow into the garage (unsuccesfully) and sweeping the water out.

Once the rain slackenend off a bit we moved all the packing boxes from the garage into the house.  Fortunately I’d moved all the boxes up onto wood after a previous, but lesser, flood so there was no damage to anything in the box.

We’re going to leave the boxes inside the house from now on as we have just arranged to move into a new rental house at the end of May.

The owner of the present house is keen for us to move out as he wants to start building on the land, and the new house is brick so it should be warmer over the winter.  It is a little further away from the beach, but on the edge of Glenrock state reserve, surrounded by bushland, with a pool in the back yard.

We expect to be another 12 months till our house will be built, so we’ll make the most of this pool throughout next summer.

On the way back from the Watagans we met up with Sarah and Grace and went to the land we’ve bought.  The roads are now half laid and there is an entrance way to the estate.  Sarah had discovered you could get through the fence, so we all squeezed through and were able to stand on our land for the first time.

Though there is still a huge mound of dirt at the front of the plot, it looks like this is going to be used to raise most of the land so it will be flatter than expected.  This will be great and could save a lot of money and make the back garden more usable.  The lot also look a lot bigger than I imagined, but I guess it will be different once a house is there.

There were a few other people who had got onto the land so we were able to meet some of the people who’ll be our neighbours.

Last weekend, Jack and I spent a night in the Watagan Mountains.  These are about 40 minutes drive away from Newcastle and are part State Forest and part National Park.

It was great fun getting to the campsite as we drove up a 4 wheel drive track.  This got quite rough in places and took us through the trees along a ridge.  We arrived at the campsite just after lunch and spent a while picking the best spot.  This was good as during the afternoon quite a few others came and there were not many flat spots in the trees.

We spent the afternoon playing cricket and searching for firewood.  Then once the campfire was lit we spent the rest of the evening beside the fire.  Before we went to bed we were able to have storytime sitting on campchairs in front of the fire which added a lot of atmosphere to the stories.

The next day we packed after breakfast and another fire, and then did a bit of exploring around the Mountains.  There are some very impressive moss covered roks and trees, and where the forest was thick you could imagine yourself in another world.

We had a poor attempt at camping over the Easter weekend.  We’d decided to camp near Bob & Carol so that we could see them as well.  After we’d pitched the tent on Friday afternoon, the heavens opened and it poured all afternoon.

As we’d been offered Carol & Bob’s rental house and it was forecast to rain most of the weekend, we bailed from the tent and went into Forster.

Apart from this we had a really good weekend.  Tony & Heather were also up with their boys, so all the children had a good run around together.  And we all had some delicious food courtesy of Carol.

On Easter morning we went to the Green Cathedral, a clearing in the woods beside the lake where Sarah and I were married.  There was a very informal Easter service in a beautiful setting, fortunately in the sunshine.

After lunch we all went to the Tanks for a play.  Jack really enjoyed himself playing on a boogie board in the small waves, and went snorkelling at the edge of the rocks which I really enjoyed.

We joined the queues of traffic coming home on the Monday afternoon, though we didn’t get held up too much, as I had to go into work that evening.

It was lovely to have a few days away and we are already planning the next ‘camping’ trip.

There are still a lot of things that happen that remind me I am in a strange and foreign land.

At work a few weeks ago I was in a Safety Meeting and we ended up discussing a poisonous snake that had been chased out of one of the meal rooms.  I think I must have been wide-eyed as others commented if we had this problem in England.

Then yesterday, there was a Tsunami alert across the east coast of Australia.  In my morning production meeting we ran through the evacuation plan in case the waves broke over the river bank.

It wouldn’t have happened in Sheffield!!!

After my birthday we went down to Sydney for the weekend.  A friend of Sarah’s from America, who she hadn’t seen for about 14 years was coming in on a cruise ship.  So we went down on the Friday night to stay in Randwick with Min and Hordy.

It was good to see Min and Hordy and their baby Otto.  On Saturday afternoon we took the kids to the Powerhouse Museum, where they really enjoyed seeing all the space ships and other stuff.  Then we met up with Dianne.  Sarah and Dianne spend a lot of time catching up, and that evening they, with Min went out for dinner.  Hordy and I stayed at home babysitting, drinking bear, eating pizza and chatting (with the election results on the tv!).

Sunday morning we met up with Dianne again at the Rocks and then had a smooth drive home.

It was my birthday last week, and I was sat at my desk almost ready to go home when I received an email from Sarah.  It was a picture of an amazing birthday cake she had just created.  Very impressive.

That evening we treated ourselves to dinner out at a seafood restaurant.  We even had a babysitter so we could go out by ourselves.  Very yummy.