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Finally, we left and had just made it out of the Byron Bay Shire, when Nici got a call asking if she’d be 1st AD on a short film. Now the deal was, Nici’s work comes first, so we decided to stop in Angourie for a few days, whilst Nici went back to Brisbane to shoot this short film. Our friends Biddy and Rookie live in Angourie, and as it was Biddie’s birthday so we were going there anyway… but lucky for us they were going back to France and allowed us to stay at their place for another week. Thanks guys.

Angourie is a nice little place east of Yamba, but a bit limiting if the weather is bad and you aren’t a keen surfer. Nici had gone with the car for 3 days, I did schoolwork with kids, we made rock castles on the beach, we explored rock pools and we swam in the blue pool. The Blue Pool is a man made quarry style pool right beside the ocean. Its deep, it can be cold, its full of little fish and its major fun to jump into from the many natural platforms. I’ve jumped from the very top a few times, but not this time. Too scary to do it with too little kids here relying on me.

Ayesha jumped in from about 3 meters, and Orlando did too from about 50cm. Both, were very excited. We went rock pooling at the north end of Shelley Beach, and it was awesome. Halfway between low and high tide…. there was a plethora of old favourites. Little fish, crabs, those funny anemone things with the red fronds that close up when you touch them…. but also some stuff we’d never seen before. There was a bright blue fish that looked like it would be at home in a tropical fish exhibit. Its fins looked more like decorative plumes than fins and it swam more like a butterfly than a fish. There were plenty of large fish in one pool, fish more than 25cm long – no idea what they were, possibly Australian Salmon. To top it all off, there was an Octopus, who was most concerned about our presence. He was not small, probably 35 cm from the tip of his head to the tip of his tentacles, and he was a fast mover. One moment pretending to be invisible, the next, shooting off as he realised we could see him. He escaped through a crack in the rock pool, into the ocean.

It was nice to doodle around just the kiddies and me for a few days. Nici returned after 3 days and we headed south west to Man River…

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  The Easter Rabbit arrives by speedboat…. behind a car . We woke up on Easter Sunday to very loud singing only to find a service being done at the lake shore at sunrise, i think it was about 5.30am. You have to remember that there really wasn’t anything else out there except a bunch of campers like us, but maybe all these weekend campers belonged to the same church. Oh well ,it was Easter Sunday and even though we are on the road, we still need to keep up with our little family traditions for the kids. So this year our Easter Egg hunt was happend in our  Caravan.    The kids had a laugh, and so did Richard and i as we kept finding the not found once and gobbled them up over the coming days as we  tydied up the caravan.  We’d just finished our very own egg hunt, when kids started streaming out of the caravan park and heading to the edge of the lake.  We were told the Easter Bunny was coming. And come he did.  By Speed boat to the pier of the sailing club.  The problem is… the lake was way low 1.2 metres below sea level when it’s supposed to be at sea level…. so the pier was 500 metres from the water.  Thus the Easter bunny arrived by boat, pulled by a car.  Kids didn’t care – it all just meant chocolate to them. We the rest of the day, driving around playing tourist in the outskirts of Adelaide.  We went to a strawberry farm and picked/ate about a ton of strawberries.  We went to Hahndorf(German replica town) and ate Bratwurst, other Germany stuff and wandered around.   Jasmine shopped, buying lots of nice clothes in the two 2^ndhand shops.  It was a nice day.  Then we raced Jas to the airport, and fare welled her back to Melbourne. it was the shortest 5 days we had with her ever. We were sad to see her go knowing that we probably wouldn’t see her again till Christmas. Orlando still not really understanding to why Jassy Bella is not with us all the time, was very sad,you see Jasmine lived with us till he was 3, then went to Melbourne.  Every visit since than he has always told her, she has to come back and live with us as he is too sad without her.  He did it again when we left her and was very emotional as we drove away from the airport.It brakes my heart to see him like that. We quietly drove the tourist drive back to Lake Alexandria.  It was so beautiful that soon everybody had forgotten there sadness.  Lots of little towns, all very European in style, Sandstone frontages, Craft and Art everywhere, and lots of Pubs and Ccafes.  Awesome.  Only 15 minutes from the centre of Adelaide town and we were in genuine farmland. We headed back to our campsite and left the next morning to head into Adelaide and find a camp closer to town. Richard also had to put in a few days of work,so it was important to go somewhere where i can keep the kiddies entertained.

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