"You know we belong together...

... you and I for ever and ever. No matter where you are, you're my guiding star". The lonely, the sad and the displaced amongst you will, no doubt, recognise the opening lines to the soap-opera behemoth that is 'Home and Away', the setting for which we found ourselves in today.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Palm Beach - the uber-affluent little town at the end of the Barrenjoey Peninsula where we dined on fish and mojitos on Christmas Eve - doubles as the fictional Summer Bay, home to the strangely popular tale of everyday Aussie folk. This far up the peninsula there's only a couple of hundred yards between the Pacific and Pittwater - a long swathe of golden sand being pounded by the ocean on the one side and a smaller beach facing calm water, yachts and seaplanes on the other. The beaches run parallel then culminate in a great hunk of rock which opens up like a hammer-head, about a quarter of a mile wide and a couple of hundred feet high, with a splendid 19th century lighthouse on top. And it was to this lighthouse that we were to venture today.

So, after an early lunch at a smashing street cafe in Avalon, we drove up to Palm Beach. The guidebook instructed us to park at the beach car park, about half a mile from the headland, and to prepare ourselves for a "400 meter beach walk, followed by a 600 meter hard climb". Hard climb, you say? In 80 degree heat, you say? Oh joy. Actually, it wasn't too bad, and it was slightly overcast which helped to keep the worse of the heat at bay. They were right about the hard climb though, and it was all the worse for Mrs V who elected to have Tizer on her back in the funky little 'toddler sling' we bought just for such an occasion.

It was quite a slow slog over some pretty rough ground and I started to wish that I'd brought some sturdier footwear with me. It was about this time that a teenage girl in flip-flops went striding past me (but not before casting me a worried kind of look the likes of which I'm pretty sure paramedics are trained not to use when dealing with patients suffering heart attacks) so I re-doubled my efforts, managing to stay a few steps behind her in an attempt to show what a fine state of health I was really in.

Finally reaching the top I quietly congratulated myself at being able to keep up with a skinny girl in flip-flops and awaited the rest of my little family, who had managed to lag behind somewhat. It wasn't long before Mrs V hove into view around the last bend in the path with Tizer clinging to her back like a shaved baby gorilla. I couldn't work out whether the look on my darling wife's face was that of grim determination to reach the top, pride at my ability to scale the headland so quickly or - possibly - something else. Hard to say really.

We all sank a considerable amount of luke-warm Evian in an attempt to re-hydrate then walked the last bit of track to the lighthouse and some wonderful panoramic views of the ocean, mainland New South Wales and the peninsula behind us. From this vantage point it felt more like being on an island than anything else, almost surround by water as we were. There was a refreshing and much appreciated breeze whipping around the top of the headland, so we lingered for a while to make the most of the view and recover our strength a bit.

The walk back down was hard on the knees, but was much less strenuous than the ascent. It was also great fun to pass red-faced tubs-of-lard on their way up, sweating, panting and asking desperately, "Are we far from the top?".

"Ooh, you've got quite a way to go - you're not even half way yet" I replied, with sadistic relish.

We were soon back at sea level again and, with understandable relief, Mrs V released Tizer from the sling so that she could toddle along the beach by herself. Time was against us - we actually had a babysitter booked so that Mrs V and I could go out for a meal together - but we still hadn't been on 'Summer Bay' beach, so we scooted over to the Pacific side of the peninsula for a stroll down the sand. It's a gorgeous beach, you can see why they like to put it on the telly five nights a week.

Tizer went for a paddle, but clearly wasn't aware that the 'surf was up' and got a drenching, the poor mite. Still, unlike Queensland, there are no box jellyfish in the sea around Sydney, so the worse she got was wet, rather than - well - dead.

Back at the car, there was a slightly unpleasant scene to be endured as we de-sanded a wet two year old who'd just half-walked, half-crawled across 400 yards of beach, but once she'd been stripped to her nappy and hosed down from a standpipe in the car park she quielty settled into her seat for the relatively short drive back to Avalon.

Our babysitter for the evening was Monica, who hails from Chile, and is an absolute delight. Tizer has been fortunate enough, over the past couple of years, to travel quite extensively and has had baby sitters from London to San Francisco and Las Vegas to Barbados, not to mention the spots we've already visited in Hong Kong and Oz so far on this trip, so she's pretty much used to the whole, varied experience. But Monica is head and shoulders above the rest and Tizer took to her instantly. She has a grown up daughter of her own and is much more the 'motherly' type than some other sitters we've had, and once she'd settled down with Tizer to read a bedtime book, our dear daughter barely lifted her head to say 'goodbye' as Mrs V and I headed into town.

We'd booked a table at a tapas restaurant in Avalon and, it must be said, this place was really quite a find. During the day Avalon is very much a streetside Cafe Society kind of town, with a slightly limited selection of places to dine out on an evening short of an Italian, a curry restaurant and - our choice this evening - The Different Drummer, all but hidden away above the shops on the old Barrenjoey Road. Everything was spot-on, from a smashing mojito at the quirky bar, to the wonderful service from the barman, our waitress and Charley, the thoroughly pleasant manager of the joint. And the food is top notch too, a really nice selection of well-cooked, tasty tapasy things: deep fried risotto balls, marinated lamb, spicy beef skewers and some particularly good patatas bravas. And we had a great bottle (or two?) of Rioja to go with it too.

The only downside was the flying cockroach that tried to get itself entangled in Mrs V's hair part way through the meal. I'm sure by now, dear reader, you're already aware of her absolute fear and loathing of these creatures, so I won't go into too many details of her reaction other than to say, it wasn't great. Charley the manager came over to apologise profusely, but we explained there really was no need; if you sit on a first floor balcony, in Australia, in the middle of summer, these things will happen from time-to-time. It really wasn't a reflection on the restaurant.

As Oz has the same (if not stricter) laws banning smoking indoors, we excused ourselves after finishing our tapas to go outside for a filthy ciggy. Charley looked around the - by now - mostly empty restaurant (which was understandable, it was pretty late on a mid-week night - either that or Mrs V's acrobatic display with the roach had scared 'em off). He told us to sit back down and brought us over an ash tray. What a nice fella. I know smoking is a dirty, smelly, unhealthy habit and I'm not promoting it in any way, I'm just pointing out that it was a nice touch on Charley's behalf and finished a wonderful evening off very nicely.

We returned to the house to find Monica watching a Spanish channel on TV (which makes sense - she is Chilean) and a peacefully sleeping Tizer in her room. Monica had had a lovely time with her, apparently, and was more than happy for us to re-book her for Saturday - our last night in Oz. We thanked her and sent her on her way then - mercifully - took to our bed rather than put me through the humiliation of another game of pool, thank god.

This morning Tizer got up and came into our room, as she often does, and we heard her singing one of her favourite ditties, 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. But there was something wrong - the words (such as she knows them) didn't sound right. Then Mrs V spotted it: "She's singing it in Spanish," she gasped. Clever girl, our Monica...