Katie's birthday today. Sixteen years. Second year in a row we have not been around for her birthday! But I understand she has been very well looked after at home. And it's not long now before she comes to us again.
We had a slow start this morning. Grant slept restlessly listening to the wind and worrying about the van. I just slept restlessly. I've noticed it seems to take us a day to recover from moving the van. We seem to flop down wherever we stop and find it hard to get going again.
Everyone got out their knitting and knitted away this morning, and I was kept busy fixing up all the dropped stitches. I think Dominic has the record for increasing...he started with 25 stitches and by the time he finished his 20 or so rows, he had 41 stitches... They are learning, anyway. We discussed the value of knowing how to knit if you were freezing in Antarctica. Grant suggested just rolling in balls of wool as you wouldn't have time to knit it all up. I said just travel with a sheep.
Grant went off for a jog, and came back soon after rushing everyone into the car so we could look at the blow hole again. It looked the same as yesterday, but since we were in the car we kept driving up the road, past the Quobba Homestead and into the HMAS Sydney memorial. It is a very simple rock cairn pointing out the different directions that lifeboats were washed up onto the beach, and with a sign donated by Harold Smith, one of the crew from the HMAS Sydney who was on shore leave for illness when she was sunk. Joseph and Dominic thought he was pretty lucky to be sick. 
There was some interesting information on the HMAS Sydney II memorial cairn.
A bit further up the road we parked and walked down to the beach, where there were lots of ragged red rocks, like poured concrete, full of little rocks, and shells exactly like the shells we found all up the beach. Oskar and Dom had fun setting afloat a piece of ply wood they found, then trying to sink it with rocks. Dominic and Joseph also found a small blowhole in the rock, that at low tide just led down to sand, and tried to fill it up with rocks, shells and coral. I put a stop to that. I'm such a party pooper.
Dominic on the beach
Back at the van we school worked and lunched and put the canvas side back on until it was time to ring Katie for her birthday. We drove up to the lighthouse where we had good reception for our mobile phone, thank you Telstra, and Internet connection. We had a lovely time checking emails and downloading stuff.
Lighthouse, Carnarvon Blow hole
Grant's download seemed to be taking a long time, so Oskar, Nadine, Dominic and I walked back to the van along some sandy paths through the banksia and scrubby bushes, looking at the different animal tracks. There were tracks of little feet hopping, little feet with tails swishing, bigger feet with tails, and something with no feet. Nadine and I saw a brown Rabbit, or maybe it was a Hare, hopping over a dune. It didn't even ask us for the time, but it did look late for wherever it was off to....
There were a few more neighbors when we got back. Another bus type setup and a little pop top camper like ours. We've decided it is a nice place, despite the wind, and we should probably stay another day to fish and snorkel, seeing as we are here.
More knitting before dinner, hide and seek with the capes in the dunes, then everyone fell asleep.
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Vicki
We had a few celebrations for Katie's birthday. At Sharon's and at church. But on the Tuesday morning itself Nan and Grandad forgot about her birthday. KT suspected that we may have forgotten and was trying to think how to tell us tactfully. While we were all sitting at breakfast she said, "Just think, I can get my learner's permit now." That worked a treat and her forgetful grandparents jumped into action and Nan brought out the presents from Vicki.
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