One of the more interesting parts of moving to Darwin was that our house is on a Defence base. There aren't too many Australian Defence bases that have housing and this is very likely to be the last time we get to live on a base, but it's a kind of cool place. The housing itself is pretty shoddy, despite our actual house having won design awards about 15 years ago, but the community on base is good and the fact that we know we will not have to worry about someone breaking into our house is great.
For the first month or so after we moved here, my oldest son's head was pretty much on a swivel looking out for people wearing camouflage, people carrying guns, APCs driving down the road - you name it, he loved it. Then it all became a bit passe as he gradually realised that he was seeing stuff like this pretty much every day. What he hasn't experienced before today was swimming lessons run by an actual Navy PTI (physical training instructor). The usual swimming teacher is on holidays this week and this guy is filling in for her. He assured me he is AustSwim qualified but it was very obvious that even though he is qualified, he's very underexperienced.
So although Olly was great and he does know his stuff, lessons for the toddlers this week was a bit hit and miss because he didn't quite know what he wanted to achieve or how to get them to listen. Lessons for the bigger boys were more constructive, although the slight case of hero-worship my boys had for him probably meant they weren't listening as well as they should either.
One More Stop to Go
12 years ago
