Under a Blood Red Sky

On Day 5 of our Eden holiday, the last day of 2019, we woke up to find a magnificent red sun. It reflected on the water, making it sparkle like orange diamonds and immediately reminded me of a U2 song. 

My mum. 

Later, I went for my usual beach walk and saw a man meditating on the beach and then he walked straight into the water for a swim. What a perfect way to start the morning, I thought. Except for the fact that swimming before 10 am is referred to as 'shark hour' but, you know, some people have no fear.

Outfit details:

Leopard dress, belt and ring - secondhand market finds.

Pink thongs- forgive me, I'm on holiday!

My mum and I went to the Eden wharf to buy some seafood for lunch. We met a lovely, talkative lady (just our kind) with a New Zealand accent who was selling seafood. We came away with oysters, mussels, snapper, prawns and a lovely chat.

This was my favourite meal of the holiday!

Later, my mum and I went boogie-boarding in the water. My mum's hilarious (and dramatic) - she squeals and oohs and aahs when first getting into the water as it's pretty cold. We had fun splashing around and befriending some cabin neighbours. Normally the water is a beautiful, turquoise blue but the haze of the smoke made both the sky and water look grey.

Beach hair, don't care.

At some point, it got very smoky and the atmosphere turned yellow. 

We stayed in our cabin, watched the news to keep updated about the nearby fires and distracted ourselves by making a traditional Italian Christmas sweet called strufolli.

We rolled the dough into long strips, cut them into small pieces, fried them, moulded them into the shape of a wreath then covered them in honey syrup. My mum is Italian and loves strufolli!

Thanks so much for reading my holiday posts. It all ended in disaster due to the Australian bushfires, which I wrote about here. We were very relieved to get back home to Melbourne but it was quite traumatic to be honest. The day after we got back home, I woke up screaming, then crying, then laughing - full hysteria. I freaked my sister out. In the grand scheme of things, we were really lucky because there are so many people who have been through so much worse. 

Although I'm back at work this week, I'm looking forward to writing about what I got up to on my holidays - plenty of day trips and catching up with loved ones. Too many photos and I've had too little time to write all about it. I hope to see you next week.

Title: New Year's Day by U2.