The laptop is charged, the e-textbooks are loaded, the online homework portal has a password and the online canteen ordering system has credit. Remember when you just had to sharpen your pencils and cover the exercise books in plastic and you were ready for school?

I thought everyone returned to work today, but it seems like the Northern Beaches are taking an extended long weekend. The golf course on Long Reef headland was covered with guys still avoiding the office.

For a day that was forecast to be stormy and rainy, Australia Day came out strong on sunshine and blue skies.

Driving home late from sailing up on the lake, we stopped at Dee Why Headland to watch the full moon. Much more fun was to be had swimming in the dark and waiting for the waves to come over the pool.

With New York deep under snow after the blizzard, it wasn’t hard to convince our NY visitors to come out on the boat and embrace a Sydney summer. Mackeral Beach is a secluded little piece of Pittwater that is a great showcase of the natural beauty of our local area.

Collected my children from RTX this afternoon, a huge gaming and internet convention held in Sydney. If you wanted to know where all the coloured hair dye supplies had disappeared to, this is the place to look. Waiting outside, I had a steady stream of cosplay characters walking past my camera. Contact lenses used to great effect on this girl.

Our 4 year old neighbour has a wonderful intensity about him. He will come up close to your face, urgently saying “I have something to tell you”. He will then regale you with all the facts he knows about tornadoes, or dinosaurs, or Star Wars. The world is huge and he is quickly amassing all the facts he needs to understand how it works. He is curious and articulate, and a whole lot of fun.

You try surviving a heatwave wearing a fur coat all day. It’s exhausting.

It’s a timeless scene, repeated throughout the world, and over many generations. The languid, hot afternoons at the end of the school holidays. Neighbourhood kids hanging out. Talking boy stuff. Important things.

With friends from New York in town, you can’t pass up showing off a Sydney sunset from the Opera House. Then an energetic, contemporary performance by an Aboriginal dance-theatre company from Broome, complete with a real water downpour on the stage and a haunting Nick Cave rendition of ‘The Weeping song’. A brilliant collaboration.

It’s always dangerous going to dinner at a chef’s house …. these dinners have been known to go until 3am in the past, and it didn’t bode well when he announced he had prepared three entrees. A generous and gracious host, with spectacular food and a cellar of wines that were older then some of the guests.

Used the Sydney Festival as a catalyst for heading into the city for a dose of culture. Saw the magnificent and intricate pencil drawings of Sydney made during the 1930’s from Lloyd Rees. Then changed genres and saw an exhibition of Tony Mott’s work as a rock’n’roll photographer over the last few decades, covering concerts for the Rolling Stones, Bowie and a few thousand others.

Finished the night at the State Theatre with a concert by the Dirty Three … accurately reviewed as “improvised lava eruptions of over-amped fiddle, guitar and train-wreck percussion”. A diverse day indeed.