Fractal Blog

A weekend packed full of activity. Saturday looked like a lovely, warm, sunny day with no surf at all so we decided to take snorkelling gear to the beach instead. And had one of the best snorkelling experiences ever. We saw four sharks! Proper sharks with lots of teeth and gills, effortlessly gliding through the water very very quickly. These were young ones; the biggest we saw was about a meter in length (maybe 1.5m but they get bigger with the retelling). This was just as well because mummy or daddy shark can grow to 3.5 to 4m, at which point perhaps our immediate reaction would have been "Aaarrgh, sharks!!" rather than "Aren't they pretty".They grow up at Shelly Beach, and move away when they're old enough. They ignored us completely, just swam away when we got too close.

Then we sighted another giant cuttlefish; they are sooo cute. We really need an underwater camera. However, having no such equipment at the moment, the picture accompanying the above paragraph shows the Harbour Bridge being used to project football-related images on, the largest such projection ever done on the bridge (I can see why, there is no bigger projection surface available on the bridge). Something to do with the football association meeting in Sydney this weekend.

Following the snorkelling the Generous One took me out to dinner at Darling Harbour, a promised treat planned for last weekend but delayed due to the unexpected travel requirements. Fishy dishes (in my case prawns but octopus for the more adventurous gourmet) were consumed, as well as excellent steaks and desserts involving chocolate cake with vanilla ice-cream. What more could one want? Turns out that we got more anyway: On the way back home our ferry left Circular Quay just as fireworks erupted from a barge next to the bridge. We got the very best view of fireworks we've ever had, or at least the closest. Possibly slightly too close; some empty shells landed on the ferry. Anyway, how lucky was that?

Sunday dawned grey and cloudy, with rain forecast. But it was the weekend and one must make most of weekends. And the surf was predicted to be as much as two feet. So we packed the boards anyway and headed off. The dark clouds did not look at all inviting but the Intrepid Surfer went in anyway. Claimed that the water was lovely, toasty warm, at any rate much warmer than the air. That I could believe. But he looked like he had fun so I went in as well, thinking I must be crazy. It turned out that it was fine; the waves were great for me (sensibly I don't feel that surf has to exceed four feet before it's "proper" surf) and I had lovely long rides all the way to the beach. It started raining somewhere in the middle of all this but we didn't mind; after all, we were already wet!

It turned out that drying oneself on the beach and putting on damp clothes during rain is rather more difficult. The post-surfing beer went down well, especially since the establishment had very sensibly put the heating on.

All in all a most successful weekend was had by all.

Incidentally, long wetsuits work. Toasty warm I was during surfing, and at least not entirely hypothermic during snorkelling. I even chased a shark (the shark won).