Holiday!

From nine till five I have to spend my time at work
The job is very boring, I'm an office clerk
The only thing that helps pass the time away
Is knowing I'll be back at Echo Beach some day

Martha and the Muffins "Echo Beach".

I took a couple of weeks off and went here  for a part of it.  My sister's place was full up with other family members for a birthday party bash thing which extended over a couple of nights.  So Flynn's Beach, Port Macquaire, mid North Coast NSW was my Echo Beach for 5 days.  I've stayed in a couple of places around Flynn's before (including my sister's various bits of real estate) and it ranks highly in the Therbs stakes for Top Beaches.  My routine is to wake up reasonably early and walk down to the beach and do some body surfing before breakfast.  Given my bulk the waves have to be pretty fucking good to cart me around and a lot of the time they are. Then I head back and shower,  have breakfast and consider what time to head back to the beach.  I like the beach, me, and that's why I live close to one.  But a beach out of town has that magical allure of being at an away game and devoid of the usual responsibilities which flap around us every day, squaking for attention like those one-legged seagulls you see down at Bondi Beach scrapping with Brit ratsackers over some end bits of fish ' n chips.  I dunno what's worse, the gulls or the ratsackers but each time I see "Bondi Rescue" I feel like firing off letters of complaint about the lifeguards' behaviour.  Imagine saving those soapy, VB-fuelled Brits.  Be a lot better off just holding their heads under water for a few minutes.

Port  Mac was good even though I'd had to spend a goodly part of a months' wages bringing the VS Commodore up to registration scratch and insure the damn thing.  But geeze that V6 engine is a fucking little ripper, heaps sprightly and likes a road trip.  When I arrived I did some shopping, part of which was for beer.  I chose one of my fave's, James Boags Premium Lager.

What I didn't count on was after placing all the beers in the fridge that the shelf in the door would dollapse when I closed said fridge causing three of the beers to fall to the floor and slightly dislodge the bottle tops, causing opnly minor leakage of beer but major leakage of the magical beer gas, meaning the beer would become flat and lifeless in short order.  So I took the only sensible option.  The first went down pretty quickly given I'd just driven half the day and was still on road trip pace.  The second took slightly longer as I flipped on the teev and watched some t-20 highlights od Oz beating down on NZ.  The 3rd had me in a suitably relaxed state as my brother and his partner arrived.  Holdiay, foricng down a nice chilled beer and t-20 cricket on the tube with five days of sun 'n  fun to look forward to.  Absolutely fucking brilliant!

One highlight of my stay was having a feed of fish down near the water in the main part of Port.  As the sun hung up its boots for the day there was a swarm of flying foxes flying from the south to the north east.  There were two streams of them clouding the sky for about twenty minutes.  Millions of the mad little buggers but by jingies it looked spectacular. 

The party went well, the whole family was there and we ripped it up in good style. I had a fine, fine time.

Now I'm back at work but only for a couple of weeks.  I'm going to Hobart at Easter to check up on a newborn and wet its head.  That will also be a fine time 'cos I love Tassie, me. (insert map ' o Tassie joke here).  It'llbe another four days of living it large, albeit in a cold climate.  But that's what warm clothes, walking, hot food and pubs are designed for, innit.

I'll be doing another instalment of my 80's travel thing within the next few days.