We’re entering a period of bad weather, with heavy rain. It’s winter here, so this will happen. It’s a bit colder, but still completely fine. I’m still struggling with jet lag – I woke up at 2am, and couldn’t sleep more.

Today we took Alfie to his last school day before the winter holiday – a pyjama day! We met his teachers and visited the classroom.

We went to the Blackbutt Natural Reserve, in Newcastle. We had lunch under a shelter, waiting for the rain to stop, in the company of peacocks. We then went for a walk and met kangaroos, wallabies, emus.

We also took the tour to a sort of zoo, where we could see birds, wombats, koalas, sugar gliders, owls etc. We followed the caretakers feeding the nocturnal animals, and the very cute koalas. These sleep like 20hrs per day. They woke up veeeery slowly when the caretakers gave them eucalyptus leaves, and slowly ate some of these. Type B personality, without the shadow of a doubt.

Back to Nelson Bay, we had pizza, just like a normal Friday, with Mike visiting.

The day started as early as 5am for some of us, very late (11am) for others. The early birds went to buy breakfast at a nearby bakery Two Bob’s.

After a quick lunch, we went to Nelson Bay. We had booked a boat tour in the bay to go and spot whales and other sea creatures. We saw dolphins very nearby, humpback and sperm whales from the distance (… according to the skipper – I couldn’t tell the difference), seals resting on the warm rocks of an island. A very relaxing and interesting tour – the sea was calm and the afternoon sun gave the perfect light for the islands and beaches of the estuary of the Karuah River.

After dinner, we started discussing the plan for the coming days. Forecasts indicate a lot of rain, better have a good plan.

Just before lunch, we met Mike, Nat’s father. Last time we saw him was 7 years ago, in France, but it felt like yesterday 🙂

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!

We’re onto our last flight, from Singapore to Sydney. This time the entertainment system is working, and that was pretty nice for me and for the kids. I watched two movies and managed to get 2 hours of sleep. The kids have been quiet, happily glued to their screen, even watching movies together (as in : let’s watch the same movie at the same time). We had invested into noise cancelling headphones for everyone, and it’s a damn good treat for such a long air travel.

Among other treats, Sarah got an empty seat next to her, and we the parents were sitting on our own with a window view, and got to enjoy the sunrise over eastern Australia as we were approaching Sydney.

Next will be border control, and if it all goes fine, we’ll be picking up the rental car, and hitting the road to Newcastle.

We’re on the plane to Singapore, the second leg of our trip to Australia. It’s been so much worries around this trip, it feels good to be on our way. It will feel even better when we are finally in Sydney. The pandemic is still around with quite a lot of uncertainties for the travellers, times five when travelling as a family. There is a lot of paperwork as well, with ever changing rules and restrictions to relate to, adding to the number of things that could go wrong. It’s the same as for every time we have traveled in the last 2 years.

Our trip so far took us to Helsinki where we had a short stopover, and now Singapore. The entertainment system in the plane was out of order, but we slept most of the time so it didn’t matter too much. The next flight is a day flight for us, we won’t sleep too much so hopefully we have movies to keep us company this time.