Evening song!

A drive down to Sydney today for a family lunch to celebrate C's birthday and then on down the coast to stay in her holiday house in Culburra.

A glorious blue sky made our road trip to Sydney a pleasure which was only spoiled by our obnoxious (and very rude) Sat Nav which wanted us to leave the main highway at every exit between Gosford and Sydney. (We've since re-programmed him and got the much more demure Jane!) The birthday lunch in Lansdown, at Sizzlers was a great success and it was good to see C enjoying herself surrounded by all her children and grandchildren.

The late afternoon light made the journey from Lansdown to Culbarra, first along the Hume Highway and then to Wollongong, a very real pleasure. Though the real highlight of the journey came as we travelled down from Wollongong to Nowra. The scenery was absolutely stunning and very untypical of any Australian landscape we'd seen before. A switchback of a road through green hills, vineyards and dairy farms. C says it reminds her of her native NZ.

We stopped at the supermarket in Nowra as the last of the evening light was glowing orange red. Chattering Rainbow Lorikeets were beginning to gather in trees in the car-park and this Red Wattle bird conveniently landed on a small tree next to the car. (It had been a very poor day for possible blips up until this point.) His very definite pose, `look at me, here I am? was very hard to resist.