Australia Day

What a day! Don’t think I’ve had a more action packed day in some time, and thanks to the many fabulous people who made it such a fantastic day! One of those days that was so surprisingly pleasing it left a warm fuzzy feeling to be home, although that might have been beer, or wine or raspberry and tonic water!

Anyway, the day kicked off at 9am with me lugging my kayak on my bike the 3 odd km down to Echo point (Roseville Bridge), setting it up and paddling the 8ish km’s to Spit Bridge to meet up with Liam, Rosie and a few of their friends at 11am. From the spit we paddled back towards Roseville to Flat Rock Beach which is somewhere in Garrigal National park around Killarney. Once we got to the beach Liam whipped out the Sunnyboys (of course!) and a few beers. The sun came out just as we finished polishing off Rosie and Liams splendid packed lunch of feta, olive and baby spinach quiche, plus roasted potatoes topped off with Pavlova, fruit salad and cream! It was amazing – and Liam had lugged the whole thing their in an esky strapped to the back of the kayak!

I had to depart the beach party a tad early to get to the Kirribilli Hotel by 3pm. So I completed the 16km round trip from the spit bridge, packed up my kayak and jumped on the bike to head up the hill to home, and the chain promptly snapped. 20 extra kilos of kayak does put some extra strain on the chain. I had little choice but to chain the bike up and leg it home with my kayak. I’ve never done this trip before without a rest for my shoulders, but I made it home in little over 35 mins. Needless to say, if I hadn’t forgotten my phone that morning, I could have simply called heath, who’d already driven down looking for me twice!

Anyway – I arrived at the Kirribilli a good hour and a half late, but since I was already exhausted and dehydrated I made up for lost time without too many problems! It was good to catch up with a few uni friends and friends of uni friends (& Nick!) but attempts to talk to everyone just resulted in me not remembering talking to anyone! Anyway – Nick foolishly made an offer for a bottle of wine which was too good to refuse (see his site for details), and we carried that into darling harbour for me and Richard to polish off in typical style. Anyone ever seen an Aussie flag used as a bottle opener?

My night concluded kinda early, about 10pm as I was completely nackered, had a little too much to drink and didn’t want to spend anymore money at Cargo bar! Thanks all for a fantastic day – and to those I still ahven’t had a good chat too (Everybody basically!) we will get around to it! As it was mentioned on the night, a lot has changed, and I can’t wait to hear all about it!