It was a treat to be met at the airport by our old friend Kate who kindly braved the rush hour traffic to taxi us to our holiday house at Bondi beach. Kate and her Aussie boyfriend Steve moved to Sydney 4 years ago to set up home away from the London cold and drizzle. Breeding was also part of their gameplan, and the fruits of their labour were involved in our welcoming committee – the lovely (if somewhat excitable) Maggie, aged 3 and the impossibly cute Hannah, who’s yet to take her first steps.
Seven of us have rented a big old house in one of the leafy residential streets just behind Bondi and when we arrive, the advance party of Matty, Selina and Steve are already sitting in the garden necking their first drinks of the day (bear in mind it’s just gone 10am local time – bloody animals that they are). In their defence, Hoady the groom is dishing out the booze. Always the supreme party organisers, Caz and Hoady have had 300 bottles of beer specially brewed for the wedding celebrations.
The beer tastes surprisingly ok. Although the hideous photo of Hoady on the label is enough to make most of us queasy.
In the afternoon we make our way 3 or 4 beaches along the coast to Coogee for the joint stag/hen bash. At this point, we realise that Sydney isn’t so much a City, as a string of holiday resorts with a big bridge and funny shaped opera house plonked in the middle. Anyway, Coogee is one of the prettiest of these resorts and a very agreeable place to meet up with some of Caz and Hoady’s family and friends for a pre-wedding hootenanny. I had a good old chat with Caz’s granddad, Leonard, who aged 78, is still practising medicine and lecturing at the University at Odessa.
A really interesting bloke, he kept apologising for his poor English. I reassured him that his command of the language was vastly superior to the gaggle of Geordies loitering by the cool box.
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