Hang Ten Dude!

Dylan is currently on half term at the moment, in Australia half term lasts for two weeks, two weeks of fun and relaxation.

I say relaxation but we sent him to the Manly Surf School which runs four days a week, for an hour and a half each day. Does anyone know how physically hard and tiring surfing is? Apparently it's hard, harder than Mr T without his milk. I haven't had the chance to have a go myself because work gets in the way (yeah, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).


So Dylan had completed four lessons in his first week of half term, and he was telling me how many waves he caught at each lesson and about getting into the barrel of the wave etc. I have been told by some of my Aussie friends that surfing is extremely hard and just standing up can take weeks of practise. So each evening when Dylan told me how many waves he was catching, I took it with a pinch of salt.

Monday 6th Oct was a bank holiday here NSW, so I took the opportunity to get down to the beach with Sandra and Dylan and see how the surfing lessons were coming along. Unfortunately the weather at 8:15am wasn't great, very grey and overcast but at least it was warm, at around 25C.


I was expecting Dylan to struggle getting up on the board, let alone riding the thing into the beach. It wasn't that I didn't think he could do it, it was just that he hadn't been doing it long enough and I expected he would get in time. I thought that maybe an instructor would be holding the board for Dylan, as he tried to balance on a wave, but no, he was able to do it all by himself!

He did it again and again, he was able ride the waves all the way in to the shore, even though the surf school didn't take the children out too far, they were still able to ride for a good 10 to 15 seconds. I have to admit that I was very impressed with Dylan and his surfing skills, and his overall enthusiasm for surfing, altough he did find it hard paddling back out beond the breakers, but he kept trying until he managed it.

So now we have a future Irish/English World Champion Surfer on our hands, he has told me that now he needs a surfboard, so he can practise as much as he can, I think it could be a wise investment :)

Much Love

S, I & D xxx

Hello Friends and Family!

It has only been four months since arriving on these shores and we have already setup a blog to keep you all up to date, man how fast is that?

We will endevour to keep this up-to-date and try to let you know what's going down, down under (get it).

At least once a week we will add to this blogg, so Friends and Family welcome, and feel free to contact us, make comments and tell us you miss us, cos we miss you too!

S, I & D xxx

There is a Huntsman in my Bedroom!

This morning Dylan came running into our bedroom telling us there is a HUGE spider in his bedroom. The fact that he had watched the movie Arachnophobia for the first time the night before meant that we didn't really believe him, I mean 4 months in Oz without any spiders in the house and the morning after watching that movie we find a monster... What are the odds?

Dylan said that it was aggressive and jumped at him, he persisted and demanded that we go to his bedroom and have a look at this spider.

Boy were we surprised when we saw the Beast! It was huge and fast, faster than a sneeze.

So we decided to take a photo of the spider before we sucked it up with the hoover, that was my plan anyway....



Sandra and Dylan being the kindly folk they are refused to let me take the Dyson to it, instead we were to chase it out to the terrace.

Sandra using a kind of Mop thing started moving the spider round the ceiling and walls, while I opened Dylans sliding doors to the terrace, wondering if it was going to jump on me. Dylan was shouting orders at both Sandra and I, you can imagine what a great help he was, managing the whole situation like only an 8 year old can :)

Eventually we managed to get the Huntsman out of the door, where he scurried off up a drain pipe.

All this and it was still only 7.45 am, what a great start to the day!

Anyway, thats that for now, we will keep posting insect and beasty stories of what we find down under!

Until next time...

S, I & D x