A super-lazy start to the day. By the time we're ready to go it's this afternoon. First job is to nip across town to the FedEx office to collect our computers. Well, grind across town as it's only three pages on the A-Z but takes half an hour. Helen emerges from the office in some disgust at the service offered and spent the whole of the half hour back again trying to get into the parcel. A well trussed package. It goes without saying that we couldn't resist a quick peek at our new gadgets which turned into an all afternoon read of the manual. Mine thinks it's 33C in the flat until I take it off my sweaty wrist and it agrees with Helen's that it's only 30C.
It's now late afternoon and any hope of visiting the Botanical Gardens and Opera House have blown away in the breeze. The only other thing we can sensibly do is go down to the beach and test out the "free diving" mode on the computers! The beach is fairly packed -- doesn't anyone work in Sydney? -- but we squeeze in near the lifeguard flags. The water's freezing on first contact and I run back out having only got my shins wet. Sent back in by Helen, sensibly sunning herself, I take the plunge and join the thronging masses of, wavedivers! Hey, my African invention has caught on quick. Maybe not, wavediving is the norm round here and with four or five feet of water washing over your head it's very sensible. Occaissionally some of the divers catch a wave and body surf back in. I couldn't quite work out if that's what they were all up to as they rarely surf back in, spending most of their time ducking under waves.
Speaking of which, my freediving proved remarkably difficult. There are minimum criteria for the computer to register a dive not surprisingly involving going underwater and staying underwater. Something I seemed unable to do. Only when the biggest waves crashed over and I scrabbled about on the sandy bottom did it register a 1.4m dive for 4 seconds, say. Hard work. When we left the beach at 6:30 the waves had calmed considerably although there was one father and small child [attached to body board] who did some brilliant body board surfs all the way in, something no-one else appeared able to do.
Mark's concocting another WeightWatchers meal for us so I pop down to the local bottle shop for some refreshments. A bit expensive Mark had said, no kidding, as I shuffled around looking for the cheaper stuff. I found some Brokenwood Cricket Pitch which would go down rather well. The evening then became a bit of a blur as I'm sure Mark didn't keep to his WeightWatchers points total through alcohol consumption.
Chez Mark, Sydney S33.90526 E151.26016 Elev. 72m
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.