watching the dolphins play

I really do love it when the kids are home on holidays. I can say that in all honesty on Monday of the first week. Ask me again next week and we'll see.

School holidays means it's ok to stay up until midnight on Sunday night knitting seventy rows of the Mystery Stole 3. Then finding a mistake and staying up until twenty to two in the morning tinking back and re-knitting back to row 59 or so. Then finding the mistake was actually a bit further back than that. I stumbled into bed in disgust.

Tonight I'm starting again.

Today I took the kids down to a beach to do a little beachcombing. The huge tides of late have decimated the sand dunes, there's a lot more beach on the beaches than there was three weeks ago. Wollongong has 17 pristine more or less deserted patrolled beaches and several more unpatrolled ones that we like to keep secret. Today we eschewed the glamour of North and South beaches (original names huh?) and went instead to the Corrimal Beach, where we picked up a Port Jackson shark egg case and lots and lots of incredibly shaped sea sponges and a multitude of empty mussel shells. And then we put them down again and went on our way, weaving through the huge piles of kelp washed up from the recent king tides and massive groundswells.



After that, mummy needed coffee. So we went a few beaches to the North, to the cafe at Bulli beach. When we arrived there was a small throng of people standing on the headland looking out to sea. 'There must be whales' I said to the kids.



No whales today (maybe tomorrrow?), but a pod of a dozen or so blue nosed dolphins playing in the water. I stood there agog while the kids found some bits of cardboard and sledded down the grassy slope. As they say, you can take a horse to water. Sorry this picture is absolutely rubbish (they were very camera shy) but they were very playful and very active.

I watched them swim around the headland to the protected side of the headland, where there was a litte group of grommets out the back of the breakers on their boogie boards. Some of them left the water (frightened or respectful I wonder?) while others stayed there. The dolphins started catching the waves in with the surfers - I don't know how I could tell by their fins sticking out of the tops of the foam but they looked like they were having such fun! After I wiped away the tears (happens every time - live drumming does it to me too) our coffee and milkshakes and away we went.

Man I love where I live.