5th February 2010 (Friday)

Following on from yesterday and the general lead-up (and in retrospect), Ian and I both agreed that we were really quite hoping that Hamilton South school would be not-so -very-good. We like the Merewether Heights school, and the area seems a nice and particular one to settle in. We were on the way. Alas, Hamilton South seems VERY good. We're not so impressed by the area to live. It's totally flat, with a lot of pre-fabricated houses, which are very strangely expensive - much more so that Merewether Heights with its beautiful views and lush greenery. The surrounds are frankly dull urban sprawl, rather staid and boring at the best, I think. It's well OK but frankly DULL, and for the price, weird. However.... we have to say, the school felt pretty much the best one. Alas once again, the surrounds are not as good as the M.H ones, there's less greenery, more tarmac, more corners that smell of must and more strangely-designed and ill-fitting buildings and classrooms. BUT. Pretty much the first thing that the principal said to us was that it's a school where they're very lucky because the parents want to encourage their students academically, and they have most of the hard work done for them before they even start. All through the school there were general indicators that attention is being drawn to actually understanding things rather than wafting over them. It was however lacking in that feverish tinge that we felt in New Lambton. Numbers in the school are middling to large-ish, but they have a couple of spaces in kindergarten and will take us even if we're out of zone.
So this leaves us with quite a dilemma. We came home and we were both just stomping round the house going 'HO!' .... 'hum'.... "Ah!' ..... considering the implications. However it moves the dynamics of domicile-issues quite a bit - we were thinking possibly trying to go for immediate purchase in Merewether heights (as the area is pretty uniform and the houses are not hugely differently priced) and save on six month's rent. However, I don't think this is going to work for the Hamilton South area, we'll have to be much more careful. It'll cost at least 12,000 aud to rent for 6 months (including removal costs), but we'll probably have to do it after all. However, in the meantime as we rent it really doesn't matter much where we are, as it's not 10 minutes' drive from M.H. to Hamilton South anyway - we might want to buy a little closer to though. The Non likes the M.H. school better, and we entirely see why. However, it might still be sensible to go for the one that seems to give the better education rather than the best grass and wind and classrooms. However, we've got a meeting with the M.H. councillor on Monday, so we'll give it a good think and turnaround then. In the meantime, we'll be looking at places in M.H. .

Well we did that first thing in the morning, then came back and did work and lunch and so on, and then at about 12.30 the Non and I went out to the beach (Ian had gone off to Pete's place to discuss grant writing issues). Now 12:30 might seem like a strange time to set out, but it was blowing a gale and almost spitting with rain so I reckoned if we left it much longer we wouldn't get to go at all (much to the Littles's dismay) so thought we'd better leave asap. When we got out we found that of course it being Friday the Baths were closed, and the beach was so absolutely littered with Portuguese Man'o Wars that one almost couldn't step straight - goodness knows what the water was like. There was absolutely nobody swimming and the waves were sky-high. So we just decided to go exploring up the beach instead, and followed the coastline for a very, very long while. I think we went half-way up to Dudley from the Merewether Baths - that's a long stretch of beach and NO-ONE on them at all. Not a soul. I know it was a foul day but really I think people just don't go - there aren't enough people in Australia to populate the beaches. We found things, poked, remarked, climbed, slipped and slid, occasionally got soaked, and very eventually turned back home. Only got back at about 4:30 I think. By that time is had rather cleared up and there was blue sky. We also discovered the fun sport of stomp-on-bluebottles-to-pop-them (wearing shoes of course), they pop just like bubble-wrap if they're reasonably dry. Littles loved it. She's still got a way to go in learning how to concentrate her rather puny weight onto the toes to get the things to pop properly -I'm sure she'll learn quite quickly though.

Came back and read a whole lot more books, watched a DVD we'd borrowed from the library, then winkled out out the Mr and got him to stop working eventually. He did us some nice BBQ'd sausages which made a very nice dinner with rice and tomato and bean salad. Altogether a very pleasant run-up to the weekend.

Right, I'll let you go. Falling asleep here anyway. Lots of love, V xxxx