ISLAND LIFE (but off the coast of SYDNEY)

Then it was off to a small island of the Coast of Sydney where my old TV mate Jen lives with her husband and 2 kids. Jen and I used to work on this TV show together many many years ago. I was straight out of university and spent 15 hours a day in a non air conditioned bus in the middle of an Australian summer ironing clothes as a wardrobe assistant. Not a fun task at the best of times, and it's certainly put me off ironing to this day ! Anyway - after the series finished, I was looking for work and Jen had been offered a job up in Airlie Beach so I just packed up a few belongings and drove up with her in trusty old beetle... Jen and her family moved over to the Island from Bondi just under a year ago, to escape the Sydney rat race I think. The boys love it there....Jen did pre-warn me about the dangers of her new way of living but when she lead me over to a canoe and told me to jump in (in the pitch black on a cold winters night with only torch light to guide us) I sorta freaked out and suggested I shout a water taxi instead !! 15 minutes and $20 later, we started the trek up the mountain (she had prewarned me not to bring to much luggage and boy was she right !). All was going well until we came across a 4WD and Jen magically whipped out a pair or carkeys and off we went.

Now, for those of you that know my family well, you will know that my brother in law Ian is a bit of a mad 4WD driver himself and over the years he has treated me to many a bumpy journey around outback Australia and the Lake District, so you would think that I would be prepared for a bit of a drive up a hill. I wasn’t. It was possibly the scariest 10 minutes of my life.

It was quite steep and and really really rocky, Jen handled it amazingly & I don’t think she noticed my white knuckled fingers gripping the sides of my chair. She was just excited to have the 4WD back in working order as she usually had to walk up the hill with 2 kids and usually a few bags of shopping from the mainland in tow!!

It was only in the daylight that I fully realised just what an amazing location they were in....the top picture is the front of their house, the second image is their amazing view through the treetops down to the harbour...
It was so wonderful to see Jenny and the fear factor certainly made the whole trip worth it, but I did choose the water taxi over the canoe on the way back as well !