Getting Away From It All

We just spent a beautiful week away on the East Coast near Swansea with my Mum and brother Chrish.  I was so looking forward to getting away and just relaxing at our friend's beautiful beach house.   We were so lucky to have stayed there in March and I felt so blessed to be able to go and stay there again during the summer.  If anyone is ever looking for a beautiful house to stay at, right on the beach, then this is the house to go to.  It's available to rent and you can check it out here.

My brother Eden and his wife Steph and kids came down.  Unfortuately he had to get back to working on building their new house, so they could only get away for a couple of days. It was so lovely to have them with us though and we had lots of fun together. 

We were lucky that they were able to bring down a friend's big boat that could fit all of us on together.  The boys were a little nervous about going out in the boat, because they hadn't been out for a while and all Harri could remember about the last time we went fishing with Uncle Eden was that the waters were choppy (for him anyway) and he was scared it was going to be like that again.  It was much nicer this time as it was such a big boat.

Harri and I sat at the back of the boat with Mum and Kobe, and it felt like someone was taking my blood pressure, as Harri was squeezing my arm so tightly! After about 20 minutes he started to relax and enjoy the ride a bit more, when he realised that it was pretty calm out.   Kobe loved it the whole time and luckily this time he wasn't seasick.

 We stopped at Bryans Beach which was absolutely beautiful.

After having lunch and a swim we jumped back on the boat, and headed out fishing.

  The oldest and the youngest (Hugh) catching some rays :)



Harri kept saying he wanted to catch his first fish, and was so excited when he finally caught a flathead (with a little bit of help from Uncle Eden).

Mum got the catch of the day and caught a gummy shark. Everyone was very excited!

 We caught a few flathead and with the gummy shark that Mum caught, we had enough to feed us all for tea. It was so nice having fresh fish for tea.

Back at the house we had fun playing on the pool table and foosball table, playing board games and just hanging out.

The house is literally right on the beach, so it has incredible views.  It's amazing to lay in the bath, looking straight out onto the beach. 

The next morning Eden was up early to go out fishing with Chrish, so I decided to join them.  It was a beautiful morning.

I was excited to catch the first fish of the day, but after that Chrish started reeling them in.
Unfortunately a lot of them were too small and we had to throw them back, but we ended up catching about a dozen that were big enough to keep. 

I ended up catching a few including this one that we threw back in.

The weather was beautiful and the water was so calm, so we went back to the house to get everyone else to come out in the boat with us.  Eden checked the weather before we went back out and said that the weather was probably going to change in the afternoon, but we could get some time out on the boat before it got too rough. This time the boys were really excited to go out again and weren't nervous at all.  This time we headed to Hazards Beach which was also beautiful.

As we were walking along the beach to get to a walking track, a sea plane landed on the water right in front of us! It was incredible and felt like we were on some tropical deserted island.   

We took the walking track from Hazards Beach to Wineglass Bay which was much easier than the walk that we did to the Wineglass Bay Lookout just a couple of weeks before Aaron died.

Most of the walk was flat and there was also a lot of boardwalk along the way.

When we arrived at Wineglass Bay we were the only ones there. It was amazing as it's such a huge spot for tourists, but the road to Freycinet National Park had been closed because of the bush fires which meant no one had access to Wineglass Bay unless you got there by boat or walked through from another beach.

The boys loved having a swim before we walked back to the boat.

My feet were filthy by the time we got there as I walked in sandals, especially compared to the amazing white sand.

It was so nice to go there and I kept thinking about our walk to the lookout last summer with Aaron and wished he got to make the walk right to the beach, but it was too hard with Kobe last year.

We headed back to the boat just as the weather was changing.  The boat ride back to the jetty was very different to the trip in the morning.  All of us were sitting in the front together and waves started crashing over the top of us and we became drenced very quickly.

The kids all started getting very upset and scared and we all decided it was much safer (and drier!) to climb in the cab of the boat. It was a very long trip back as Eden tried to make the trip as calm as possible with winds and waves that were picking up very quickly.  It was actually very scary for us as we aren't used to being on boats, and we were crashing down on waves and hitting our heads on the top.   I couldn't fit in the cab, so sat at Eden and Chrish's feet and held on very tightly. 

I could see how scared my boys were but kept reassuring them that we would be okay and that Uncle Eden would get us back safely.  I kept looking at Eden (who was drenched with waves crashing up onto him all the time) and could see that he was calm and knew how to handle the boat to get us back as quickly but as safely as possible which made me feel a lot calmer. I kept hearing him say to Chrish 'this is a great boat!' so I knew that he had been through worse before and was happy with how the boat was handling the conditions.

I joked with Mum and Steph that this was going to be the accident that I had talked about in my letter to Aaron where all of us died together and although I would love to all be back together as a family together again, I wasn't really keen on drowning at sea! It was so rough that I couldn't even get to my camera or phone to take any photos!

It was great to finally made it back into the bay at Swansea and was incredible to see how calm the waters were in the bay, compared to how rough they were out on the ocean.  We were so happy to finally get back in. 

Eden and Steph left that night and we were sad to see them go, but looked forward to having the rest of the week at such a beautiful place. 

Even though it was only a week I have lots to write about, so I will break it up into different posts. Be prepared for lots of posts coming up about the beach, sun, beautiful scenery and boys having lots of fun :) It was so nice to get away from it all just for a week.