Easter, tow trucks and mini-breaks

Well, what a mixed bag our Easter has been. Easter morning started reasonably well - despite unplanned rain, the egg hunt in the garden went down a treat, and the kids were thrilled with the Easter bunny's offerings, in addition to super eggs and pressies from Granna and Grandad and Auntie Kim and Uncle Martin.

Far too much chocolate was consumed before bags were packed and we all set off for a three day trip down to Kiama, South of Sydney - somewhere we hadn't yet ventured but about which we had heard wonderful reports. All went well at first - we only had about 40 minutes to go when we stopped for lunch at a stunning park overlooking the sea, munched our sandwiches and felt happy and smug, weren't we lucky were to be in such a lovely location, on Easter Sunday, and look - it had even stopped raining!!!

However, our smug happiness was not to last. Leaving this lovely lunch spot, the car spluttered and choked, and wouldn't get itself into gear properly. Who said automatic cars were a good idea??? The driver (husband of mine) persisted trying to get this unhappy vehicle to continue as it rasped and screamed and gagged... right until we were in the very worst spot of all to break down, then he let it die. Yes, he dragged it right into the middle of a bridge, not any old bridge but a famous bridge called the Seacliff Bridge

- a location shot for many a car advert and somewhere it is very inadvisable to suddenly stop unless you want heaps of abuse/hooting/shouting from all kinds of random passers-by. And then it started to rain again, not just rain, but POUR.

The kids were petrified, being dragged out of the car across the barrier, in pouring rain, on a bridge in the middle of nowhere, while their Dad tried to hold down the hazard light switch which decided to choose that moment to let us know it didn't actually work.

"Ha ha" we told them "isn't this funny", "look at all that lovely water swirling menacingly underneath us, look at the lovely view" "isn't this fun, yippee, we have never broken down before have we, no don't cry, that nasty man hooting because we are in the middle of the road in the middle of a bridge doesn't really mean it!!" etc etc... "oooh but yes, let's smile for the camera, show them HOW MUCH FUN WE ARE HAVING!"

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we did call the NRMA (Aussie equivalent of the AA who we had never got around to joining despite deciding that we should various and numerous times) who DID let us join there and then (for a vastly inflated fee as we had not been wise enough to join BEFORE requiring their assistance) and who DID come out and rescue us and then proceed to tow our car all the way home again, at huge expense! (yes, to more "oh isn't this fun, kids, you have never been in a tow truck before, have you!!!"...retch....)

Having dumped our broken car at a local garage, kind friends Dora and Gordon swapped our silly little very pretty 2 seater car at home (which at that point was utterly useless to us as a family of five and is being resigned to history as soon as feasibly possible now that I have fully realised the stupidity of having only one car which can seat us all...) for a sensible car of theirs, and we set off glumly back on our holiday again, trying to pretend that we hadn't noticed a 2 hour journey had by now taken us more than 7 hours, and was going to take us 9 before we actually arrived. We may as well have gone to Queensland!

Anyway, we did eventually have a lovely, lovely time, once we managed to block out the horrors of the trip and the knowledge that we had a $4k car bill awaiting us on our return (yes, whole new gearbox......) The hotel was gorgeous, and the kids had a very spacious interconnecting room to ours which they loved... they couldn't get over having a phone, a balcony, a fridge and a bathroom all to themselves... and the buffet breakfasts were a big, big treat (although who could have predicted that they would help themselves to massive bowls of endless fruit and that would be all??!!!)

We wandered to the beach nearby (phew, at least now it was sunny again)

and into Kiama, a lovely spot where we caught market day, had fish and chips, fed the pelicans


and saw the famous blowhole.

All's well that ends well... unless you are our car, or our bank balance, of course...!