ajft

Eight in the morning and Jo is still sound asleep, I'm wide awake so off I went down the street for a walk along the beach and some time to myself. Eight people in the house crowds on my nerves at times — especially when the youngest them can wake you up screaming and the next just behaves like the three year-old that he is!

Walking through the campground I saw a couple who were cycle-touring, tents and bikes and gear and parts of a “ROAD-TRAIN” sign picked up from somewhere in the outback... I thought of stopping to say hello but walked on by and left them sitting quietly enjoying the morning. On the way back the campground was still full of people and noise — all except for one tidy, vacant block. They'd packed up and moved on.

Lorne; petrol, one dollar per litre; milk, two dollars per litre; coffee, $AU15 per litre and the piece de resistance, tomato sauce, $AU40 per litre! A bizarre bit of maths that came to me as I stood in line in the bakery for a pie.

Standing-room only out on the Lorne pier for the fishermen. With up to six rods each its amazing that there are any fish left, and that they can avoid tangling around each other as they try to catch them.

Back at the house, seven of us jumped into two cars and drove off to Blanket leaf picnic ground to walk down to Cora-lyn cascades — Jack and Will, John and Kath, Jo, Ann and I — a major undertaking when two of the seven are toddlers.

This was the same walk that Jo and I had attempted a year or two ago at the end of winter when floods and fallen trees made it nearly impassable. The track downstream of the cascades still looked impenetrable, we'll have to try the rest of the walk one day... For today, it was enough to make it to the waterfall and have lunch on the rock and watch the native fish in the creek, then walk slower and slower back up the hill towards the carpark — little voices claiming more and more stridently that they were tired. Along the way there were fungi and tree ferns and small birds nests to catch the eye, a half-rotten bridge that wobbled alarmingly, and two strange birds perched on the path that allowed us to get quite close before scurrying off into the underbrush.

Still time at the end of the afternoon to stop and pick three ice-cream containers full of blackberries from the roadside. Not quite as luscious as the ones down by the river, but infinitely easier to get to!