"Where are we going Nanna Sarah?"

"Where are we going Nanna Sarah?"
"We are hunting kangaroos, granddaughter."
I wrapped my skin around her. She took the wooden spoon from the kitchen sink and followed me outside.

We walked for a long time. We were both quite tired by the time we got to the sea.

"Look at that island!" I said to Gracie, at the top of the secondary dune. "We could swim to that island!"
"We need a boat," she said. My grandie is practical in these respects . Both of us looked at the ships on Gage Roads.

"Maybe that one?"
"Too far to swim, Nanna Sarah."

We both jumped into a boat in the playground at Cottesloe. Parents in puffer vests, compression tights and expensive joggers scattered with their labradoodles, as we jumped in.
"Matilda," I said, "How are we gonna get to the islands?"

"We have to take over! We need a boat!"
 "We need a boat!" I shouted and she waved her wooden spoon.
I jumped around, rocking the playground boat.
"The jellyfish are taking over. We need a boat!"

We were kicked out of there by some three year olds and so we walked over the next dune. By then my grand daughter was exhausted. Her gumboots were full of sand and I worried about her blisters. The kangaroo skin was now over my shoulder.

"Gracie, at the next cafe, I'll buy you a juice," I promised her, thinking that the next cafe was probably pretty close.
"Yes, Nanna Sarah," she said, stoic, trudging on.
And she did, that kid. She trudged. She walked for miles with me. An hour later I bought her a bottle of black currant juice from the corner store.She'd walked the whole way home with me, refusing to be carried..