In quarantine

Trish and John celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by treating the entire family to a night's accommodation and dinner at the former quarantine station at Manly - now Q Station.

I set off with Louka a bit after 2pm and arrived before 3. We were the first to check in, and at first Louka just wanted to sit in the cottage and draw.

After a while I enticed her to go for an explore, and we almost made it to the beach when she discovered a flight of stairs that replaced a funicular railway to carry goods from the jetty up the hill. It was such a long flight she had to try it, and it took us nearly back to our cottage. Trish and John were just arriving so we settled in a little while Louka explored the banksia tree out the front.

Dinner at the in-house restaurant was very nice, and my parents had bought vintage champagne to celebrate. My dessert of cardamom and palm sugar creme brulee was particularly good. Louka ate all her chips and bread and some of her burger, and was pretty good on the whole - Trish thanked her afterwards for being so well-behaved, which pleased her.

Breakfast was a vast smorgasbord, of which Louka most enjoyed the machine-made pancakes. You pushed a button on the machine, and the display showed how far along your two pancakes had gone before they emerged from the roller at the end. After breakfast we got ready to leave, packed the cars and checked out, then headed back down to the beach for a while. Of course the swimming togs were in the car but that didn't stop Louka.