A house picnic was arranged, as a chance for the newbies
(quite a few of us) in the house to let our hair down and better get to know
the rest of the house – not that it was needed as such after our Friday night
party ensured we all got a little merry and any ice that was left was now
broken so to speak. Farag, the elder statesman of the house who helps run the
place, arranged the date, location and travel arrangements so we only had to
show our faces. We were all asked to prepare some food to bring along as there
would be around 16 people going so plenty of mouths to feed. Nicola and I scanned
through the list of food and thought no one was bringing crisps “just a lot of
chips, strange”. After buying pots of pringles we realised chips = crisps so
our pringles were added to a box of 50 crisp packets and numerous doritos to
ensure a healthy lunch for all. We also decided to cook pots of pasta as an
alternative to all the meat that would be on offer – our pasta went untouched,
this is Australia after all – but it does mean we have days’ worth of pasta to
eat so, every cloud eh?
We parked up and carried our bags of food and drink along a
rocky coastal path that led towards the beach. We tested the temperature of the
sea but it was icy cold and we didn’t dare venture in once throughout the day.
The sun had retreated behind a blanket of thick cloud which kept the
temperature cool and threatened (but never followed through) rain. Due to the
proximity to the sea and the shape of the rocks there was a constant wind that
blew through the day which really bit into your skin after we had taken a dip
in the stream. We played volleyball, football, touch rugby and water volleyball
(which was more like passing the ball to each other but in the water). During
our football game Nicola in particular was the fox in the box, scoring a couple
of goals including a screamer from the halfway line demonstrating why she was a
fixture on the Abergwili Ladies Football team for a number of seasons. It was a
lovely day, lots of fun and we even watched some young locals jumping, diving
and back flipping off a sheer rock face deeper into the stream – fortunately none
were injured from what we could tell.
When it was time to eat we borrowed a barbeque from a group of Lebanese men (who narrowly defeated us in a game of volleyball) who I suspected were rugby players on account of their size and general loud and laddish demeanour, and we were treated to our first – that’s right first barbeque – in Australia. We had beef spicy sausages and hot dogs, salad (well I had one piece of cucumber), crisps and beer. I felt like I had really travelled Australia now that I had had a barbeque! The heat from the Barbie warmed us as the wind was starting to pick up and after around six hours on the beach we left to go home – via a few stop offs.
The only snag to the day was that we had to get up early. By
early I mean 07:00 in order to be ready for 08:00. That’s not early really, but
after weeks of lie-ins it sure felt difficult getting out of bed. The Royal
National Park is about an hour from where we live in Concord/Burwood, inner
west Sydney, and we created quite the convoy as five cars of people drove
through the Sunday morning traffic at one point forcing a gas station café to a
standstill after an unprecedented number of coffee orders. Just as Australia is
massive, so are the National Parks so within Royal National Park there are
several beaches, lookouts, coastal walks etc. but our destination was
Wattamolla Beach, a small inlet that on one side had the raging sea, the other a
salt water stream and sandwiched between them was a patch of sand.
We parked up and carried our bags of food and drink along a
rocky coastal path that led towards the beach. We tested the temperature of the
sea but it was icy cold and we didn’t dare venture in once throughout the day.
The sun had retreated behind a blanket of thick cloud which kept the
temperature cool and threatened (but never followed through) rain. Due to the
proximity to the sea and the shape of the rocks there was a constant wind that
blew through the day which really bit into your skin after we had taken a dip
in the stream. We played volleyball, football, touch rugby and water volleyball
(which was more like passing the ball to each other but in the water). During
our football game Nicola in particular was the fox in the box, scoring a couple
of goals including a screamer from the halfway line demonstrating why she was a
fixture on the Abergwili Ladies Football team for a number of seasons. It was a
lovely day, lots of fun and we even watched some young locals jumping, diving
and back flipping off a sheer rock face deeper into the stream – fortunately none
were injured from what we could tell.
Our first stop off was a viewing point called Governor Game Lookout which gave us a fantastic view of the rugged coastline which seemed even more rugged in the current stormy weather. We took some pictures and headed to our next stop – Garie Beach – where the intention was to have a coffee. In our house we have people from Libya (Farag and Ibrahim), France (Aurelie and Loic), South Africa (Krish), Malaysia (Gary and Jesse), Korea (Nam, Mi Yung and Kyu), India (Sharmi), Belgium (Jens), Australia (Wayne) and the UK (Nicola, Sean and I) and the uniting factor is the love of coffee (well, aside from the UK contingent where the love of coffee is not so strong). We have been introduced to many ways of preparing and drinking coffee which has been interesting and I now have the desire to buy a coffee machine when we get back to the UK. Unfortunately the coffee shop was closed so after a few pictures we headed back to town where we stopped off at Maccas for a coffee before finally arriving back home. It was a lovely, but tiring day, and after getting back I had a dinner of sausages (the left-overs from the Barbie heated up and skewered) before we headed to bed.
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