On Saturday I fell madly in love. With a house.
It's a stone shack in the Royal National Park, nestled in a windswept valley near South Era.
There are well-worn tracks through the bush scrub where kids explore the sloping valley: the perfect place to grow up. There are sea eagles and fat black snakes (we saw one slipping out of a tussock on the sand), and a towering midden that gives you the impression that the Dharawal people who once inhabited this beautiful spot have only just left. There are rock pools with swaying, bright green sea grass, colourful fibro huts dotted around the hills and more reminders of the not-so-distant past; a Dharawal rock painting of a snapper, a bit of old rope that had been worn by the sea and wind.
I felt like I was in a state of awe the entire time we were there (to the amusement of my family).
I kept thinking of the Jonathan Safran Foer quote from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: "It was the one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all."
That feeling's been rare for me lately, but that's what being in this beautiful place, with the best company, felt like.
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