It's raining cats & dogs!

We're now living about an hour south of Sydney, in Flinders, New South Wales, population 5,200. It's a suburb of the city of Shellharbour, population 69,700. We're just over 2 km (1+ miles) from the village of Shellharbour (a district of the city of the same name), which is a popular seaside area of quaint shops and eateries.

Shellharbour village waterfront

The photos you'll see in this post are from February 28th. Little did we know at the time it would be the last rain-free day we'd see for a while. We've had heavy rainfall each day since, and the forecast isn't promising.

On the bright side, we did go to a Salvos store yesterday and it had a sale of books to celebrate World Book Day. Salvos stores are the Salvation Army charity shops, which in Canada are commonly called "Sally Ann". The books were $1 each (Australian and Canadian dollar are basically at par), so we stocked up for rainy days and/or an upcoming cruise. On the internet I later saw that World Book Day is April 23, but we were happy they seemed to celebrate it early. Perhaps they were overstocked with books?

Back to Flinders. Wikipedia shows the area as being known for its "active outdoor lifestyle" and "green open spaces of bush reserves, waterways and landscaped parks". Being an oceanside small community is what drew me to this house sit, but unfortunately we've had to put many of those outdoor experiences on hold, because of the weather. We are here for five weeks, so hopefully things will change.

Looking in the other direction from the previous photo

Back to our recent photos, and we'll take you on a walk of the waterfront. The photo above is looking at the harbour area, in the opposite direction to the earlier photo. It was taken on a weekend day and although the shops and restaurants were busy, the beach was not. 

The white row you can see in the distance, in front of the pine trees, is a caravan (trailer) park. Caravans are popular for vacations in Australia.

You can now also see how much of the shoreline is quite rocky.

Notice the bright blue patch on the right side of the photo, to the right of the caravan park.

That bright blue patch is from two saltwater pools that are open year round. The one on the left is a children's pool, whereas the one on the right is deeper and larger. When our homeowners took us on a tour of the area, there was one lone pelican swimming in the children's pool.

You'll see a "pool closed" sign, saying "no water". We walked by (yes, we ignored the "no entry") and the pool was full of water, but the clarity wasn't good. Maintenance men were there and when we later drove by, we could see the pool was being drained. 

On our walk at the beach, we did see some small jellyfish washed up, so perhaps the pool is a better option. Hopefully when the weather improves, we'll get to use the pool. We did move into fall this week though (autumn), so I'm not sure the temperatures will make a pool inviting to me.

We did drive further along the coast that day, where we saw lots of these pretty flowers. Hopefully we'll head into finer weather soon, and I'll be able to take more photos. Until then, I guess we'll get back to our reading :)

Look closely at the image - it's raining cats & dogs!