Port Julia Vacation - Easter Weekend

We are back from Mum's house at Port Julia on the York Peninsula. Its a beautiful open plan house overlooking coastal scrub, a short scramble down a beach trail to a nearly deserted cove. Each morning I woke (around 5.30am) to a blush of red over the seaward horizon and every night we watched the full moon rise in the cobalt sky.

Frost, Josh (pushing Wren) and Mum on an early walk to the Jetty.

Our days settled into a routine - down to the beach for a quick morning swim before the receding tide made it too shallow to swim over the weedy reef which emerges by mid-morning. Later, Mum and I took the kids out on expeditions to look for fossils or to the Fair. Later, we stayed home for lunch and naptime during the hottest part of the day before heading off in the late afternoon to swim or catch crabs from the nearby jetty.

Underneath the jetty at low tide where we had a picnic and swallows swoop.

The Jetty near high tide.

We tried fishing for squid from the jetty and Frost learned to cast with the small rod (minus a hook). At first he had no idea about fishing but was worried "there would be lots of blood". When he saw a few squid caught he became quite keen and wanted to fish. Wren was also excited about holding the rod and reeling it in. Here we are practicing fishing on the local beach. I shall post a separate story about crabbing because we enjoyed it so much and it was such a BIG event.

Wren 'fishing' at the cove at high tide. Note hats and sunshirt!

Wren and I at the jetty with the squid hook on. Note GREAT EXCITEMENT on Wren's face.

Every day we dug holes and built castles on the beach. Here are Frost an Wren on the way to the beach with the beach shovels. Wren has started to call all green things "minty" color. In Australia there are many mint flavored green things and delicious milk chocolate with crunchy green flakes in it (mint crunch?). Sadly, the minty shovel broke during castle construction so we need a new one for Kangaroo Island.

Joshua is over the worst of his jet lag but is in an unusual sleep habit of going to bed at 9.30pm and waking at 7am. We bought him a kangaroo hide hat at Trims and here he is while watching Wren (Frost and Mum are crabbing off the jetty). Josh has managed to squeeze in some Bejewelled on the iPod and reading of one of his epic 5 book series. He would prefer more rain and gloom but is tolerating the sun fairly well with the help of the hat.


Frost loves the boogie board Granny bought for him. Since there are no waves to speak of Frost has made up a number of games (or tricks) to do on the board. He tries to stand on it, jump off, does slo-motion replays of the board flipping over and hitting him in the face before landing on his head. He splashes about with goggles on looking for crabs and fish but also likes getting salt water in his eyes.

"I like doing HARD stuff. I don't just like doing 'lie on this board' stuff. I like doing WOAH, HEY, ARGH, stuff. Well, there were things I attempted to do. My funnest thing I attempted to do was stand on my board and once I tried to jump in mid-air and do a spiral with my board and land in the water. I failed at that too. There were about 5 things I did succeed at. Like... like going into the water with my board, throwing my board in the water and jumping on it. That was a really fun thing."

Here he is in the water off "our beach" near the house.


According to Frost the best thing at Port Julia was "probably crab fishing". More on that later.