New Year's

27/12/11-01/01/12

A change of scenery as for the New Year I was invited to join my hosts down at their beach house in Jervis Bay, around 3 hours south of Sydney. The drive down was quite pretty as we took the coast road flanked on one side by the ocean and on the other by mountains. Arriving in the early afternoon we prepared the house as it is only used several times a year. I was to be housed in a separate apartment in the garden so I had my own private space. We were joined by their daughter and her family later on so there was plenty of use around for the holiday period. Alex their daughter’s son is a mad cricket player, most of his thoughts centre on it. For him the most important thing to set up was the cricket pitch in the back garden, this was to be the hive of activity over the next few days and for me a change to vastly improve my bowling skills. The beach was only a stone’s throw away from the house, literally across the road. That night I had my first experience of the Kinect, a motion sensor device on the Xbox which reads your body movements and translates the actions on screen. The dance game proved very popular.

Our first full day started with a bike ride down to the local bay. The daughter’s daughter was celebrating her birthday and received a brand new bike so it was tried out that morning. Round this side of the coast it is known for its waves so a new experience for me was taking part in body boarding. Over the coming days I got really into this, such a great feeling when you catch a wave right and are pushed onto the shore, accelerating as you go. That evening we went to a local funfair and had a go on a few for the rides until the spinning ones took their toll on our party.

Another day mainly filled with the same activates including cricket and body boarding. In the afternoon we took a trip to the local shopping centre so the others could have a look at the sale items. In the evening we had a bonfire as we had cropped wood from the tree in the garden so we could bowl better, burning off the wood we cooked some marshmallows at the same time.

A change for breakfast as we ventured out to a local national park to use the on-site barbeques to cook that morning. Afterwards we had a quick bush walk before heading down to a nearby surf beach to try our luck at catching some waves. The sea was quite rough with a rip tide so it wasn’t ideal conditions to try our luck. Later that afternoon we set up the badminton set in the back garden and had a mixture of cricket and badminton games.

New Year’s Eve went the same as most days apart from in the evening of course. That night instead of having one main meal we were each given the task of preparing a course which we would continue to serve over the course of the evening. For my contribution I was going to serve sweet chilli chicken and chocolate covered strawberries. So in the morning we paid a quick visit to the local packed supermarket to grab our ingredients. In the evening we headed down to the local harbour to watch the firework show the town was putting on, for a small town it was a very good display. Back at base I made and serve my chicken with went down a treat before serving up my chocolate covered strawberries which were equally great. The New Year was officially rolled in by watching the fireworks from Sydney on the television. Another year but this time I was starting it from the other side of the world, half a day before my family back home would celebrate.

New Year’s Day was to be my last full day in the company of my excellent hosts and what better way to start the year than down at the beach playing in the sea this time with a blow up raft. That afternoon we went down to the town to have lunch, I treated my hosts to fish and chips which due to crowds out that day took an hour and a half to be served! Happily they were worth the wait though. With everyone feeling tired that evening we just crashed out and watched a film.