Granny's Beachhouse

From the city to 'Granny's Beachouse'

The last days in Australia went by quickly and besides productive work on a business plan for Vanuatu, we enjoyed the typical life in an Australian family. Trudy lives in Ulladulla with her boyfriend every weekend, where they have a big house right by the sea. She also calls it 'Granny's Beachhouse'. Since she already has 5 grandchildren and another 2 are on the way, she likes to bring her grandchildren there. But not only them, her visitors also shouldn't miss the wonderful Beachhouse.

After a busy day in the library in Cronulla, we went to Ulladulla on Friday. The journey from Sydney takes 3 hours. Trudy does it every Monday and Friday. So 'easy'. The journey is actually quite beautiful and since we picked up little Taj halfway, the journey was also quick. Taj, the son of her oldest daughter Stephanie, is 2 years old and Steph is expecting her second child shortly before Christmas. Trudy decided to give her some relief and we took Taj to the coast for the weekend. It was pretty sweet, funny but not without its challenges... Since he is quite shy with strangers, it took some time to get used to each other. But when a little friendship developed between Taj and Michel and Darryl, Trudy's boyfriend, was also pleased with male company, I baked banana bread with Trudy, prepared dinner, or spent over 3 hours working on the business plan with a bottle of wine.

Every morning we jumped into the water at the rarely visited Rennies Beach, enjoyed the peace and watched surfers in the water. We also tried our luck a few times. With quite strong currents and wild waves, we left that to the professionals (although Michel also turned out to be a professional in Bali 😄 🤙🤙).
Another highlight was the beach located in the south, where we were guaranteed to see many kangaroos hopping around on the drive and on the surrounding green areas. They were so used to humans that we could get close to them and didn't have to fear a skilled knockout boxer. Taj was also very excited and was quite exhausted on the way back. Before a crisis occurred, we had an ice cream and so we could go home satisfied and without any complaints :)
Other than that, the days were filled with barbecues, beer o'clock, and a delicious sushi night. It's really nice to vacation in the Beachhouse and we will definitely come back in the future. Vanuatu is just around the corner.
On Monday we went back to Sydney, because on Tuesday we were going to continue to Bali. Trudy dropped us off halfway and we visited the Blow-Hole (in a cave in the rocks, pressure builds up due to the waves, which is released in the form of a fountain through an opening) in Kiama on the coast. The train took us back to the CBD of Sydney in 2 hours and we visited Darling Harbour. We weren't so impressed with it and we arranged to have dinner with Katha in The Rocks, a small beautiful neighborhood between the Harbour Bridge and the main ferry terminal, where Katha arrived from Manly. We said goodbye to Australia with a delicious Aussie burger and sweet potato fries 👌 and chatted long into the night.
On the way home, I received the check-in email, which shocked us for a moment. Our flight was supposed to leave at 4:30 pm with Qantas, but the tickets were for 11:20 am with Virgin Airlines. During the booking process before, it kept crashing and we thought we had booked the flight twice! Confirmation only came for the later flight, but no tickets. Whatever... Our planned time in the morning was shortened, so we got up at 5 am and Trudy fit it into her schedule to drop us off at the airport.
So everything worked out smoothly after all and the earlier time was fine with us... After 6.5 hours, we landed in Bali, drove to Canggu, and settled into a small apartment.... Finally vacation 😉