Yes, this weekend the people of the world's largest island and smallest continent came together as one in a huge over-consumption of beer and prawns to celebrate the nation's 'birth' on January 26 1788. Perhaps a slight oversight seeing as there were a few people already living here when the first fleet spied Sydney harbour and sailed in looking for somewhere to pop up a pup tent and a Union Jack. I heard on the radio the other day that many aborigines refer to Australia Day as Resistance Day. Anyhoo, everyone gets an extra day off work and the bottle shops do well. Australia Day was on Saturday, but the whole long weekend becomes something of a knees up. As Rob was working, Scarlett, Florence and I packed ourselves off to Dee Why, a gorgeous surf beach to meet up with Zoe and Paul for a swim in the ocean pool and to watch the Australia day entertainment.
The weather was roasting so we then popped to Zoe and Paul's house to make use of their pool for an afternoon dip. On Sunday we discovered the glorious Blackburn Gardens, a charming, shady park, more like an English country garden, set on the hill behind Redleaf pool. We have been going to Redleaf for ages and had no idea this gorgeous park was right behind it.
We met up with Carolyne, Luke, Melissa and Larry for a lovely picnic before heading down the path to the harbour pool, to swim out to the pontoons and cool off. It is soooooo hot again at the moment so we are definitely into night time shower season. I had to get up twice last night to cool off with a cold one. I set up the paddling pool yesterday afternoon for Flo, who was burning up. She liked it but promptly fell out.It is also the season for spiders. They are everywhere and, of course, being Australia, many of them are potentially deadly, particularly if you are, say, 3 or 10 months old. Rob found a seriously deadly redback spider, in the process of devouring a cockroach three times its size, in a web right next to Florence's high chair. Nice. Here is some info about redbacks : 'Redback spiders feed mainly on ground-living insects that blunder into their webs, but small vertebrates such as lizards and even mice can fall victim. Also eaten - after mating - are the tiny male redbacks [ha ha ha]. Caution is advised as their bite is very poisonous and potentially fatal for children or the elderly. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal or generalised pain, sweating [eh?], restlessness, palpitations, weakness [moral or physical], muscle spasm, fever.' This blog is highly educational, is it not?
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