We landed early morning local time at Sydney airport, queued for an hour at the passport control, picked up our luggage and went through border control – very disappointing, no cameras, no luggage check 🤣

We bought 4G SIM cards for the parents – we can’t live without a connection now. We picked up our rental car, and hit the road north towards Corlette, near Newcastle. As we were driving through Sydney, we caught a glimpse of the top of the opera, before entering a tunnel that took us across the bay. Even though we’ll be back here in a few weeks, we decided to turn around and find a spot to take not just a picture, the picture! That’s done, we can send it to friends and post it on instagram – we are in Australia.

We arrived in Corlette mid afternoon, and were welcomed by Nathalie and Matilda. She took us for a walk to the nearby Bagnalls Beach, a postcard landscape really, with its white fine sand and the rather tropical vegetation.

Tom was back from work when we came back home, and Alfie came back from school right after.

The challenge of the evening was to stay awake as long as possible, to quickly get used to Australian time (8 hours ahead of Norway).

It was a long day, but a real relief to have finally arrived. Holiday planning and logistics have been a challenge in the last 2 years, and a source of stress for us, the organising parents. And of course we hadn’t seen Tom, Nat, Alfie and Matilda for almost 3 years. So it feels especially good to be here!