Australia

I would've written sooner, but Australia has seduced me. Taken me under. First Sydney, now Noosa.


I could give you a litany of things we are doing, but it would just be something like this...watch children strip off their dresses and run into the surf, more running in the surf, loud peels of laughter, sand castles, extensive moat building, more chasing down the waves...


Oh and there's eating...


It's summer here. So, we eat fresh locally grown passion fruit with a spoon on our veranda and make a meal with prawns so plump and fresh they are barely dead. We sack out on pillows at beach side cafes in Cronulla with Granny Ann and stuff ourselves with fresh salads and mango and avocado and let the salt water sting our skin and the sun beat down on our backs.


And there are figs, oh yes, it's fig season here, or is it always fig season here? There's Burnt Fig Jam, Honeycomb & Caramel Ice Cream from a company called Maggie Beer and large tubs of Mango Yogurt from the Queensland Yoghurt Company, which is quite literally the best yogurt I have ever had in my life. Nothing in the States compares or even comes close.

Thanks so much to David's dad and his wife, Trish for filling our apartment fridge with delicious treats and turning us onto Belmondos, the local gourmet shop, where I purchased four gigantic tubs of yogurt that were supposed to last me all week, but are all nearly gone. Don't tell David. My yogurt consumption has freaked him out.


And there is the pool outside our apartment, a full kitchen with lots of supplies to cook up whatever is fresh at the markets, a jacuzzi that is quite sinful, hundreds of squawking Cockatoos that wake us up every morning with their incessant catterwalling, a lizard living in our apartment and parrots in our back yard.

The kids are off with David right now fishing. Fishing, by God, with live bait. Lucy dreams that she will catch a fish big enough for me to cook up for dinner. I'm rooting for her.

And later, I'm roasting a chicken and Poppy and Granny Trish will bring prawns and we'll head to the beach, with our suppers packed, and we'll eat what we've cooked with our fingers and drink a bottle of wine and watch the kids run into the surf and find crabs and vow to find a way to bring it all home on the plane.


And in between, David and I will wind our arms around each other and give each other a little smile or maybe a soft kiss and then, someone small and loud will interrupt us with their long-winded adventures, or shells found or squeals of laughter. And I will just continue to be satisfied and happy here with my brood.

I'll be back. But not too soon. This is paradise.

xo YM