Howdy... looking for some friendly advice.

Around this time last year I laid a Sir Walter turf lawn in my backyard and
it took off fantastically well - particularly with all the rain we received
in January/February.

This year the lawn is not going so well however - I live in Sydney and have
not had any reasonable rain for at least 4 or 5 months.

The subsoil for the lawn is effectively a small amount of topsoil on top of
a sandstone shelf. In some places in the yard the sandstone would be only
20-30cm or so beneath the surface. In others there is a few metres.

During winter the lawn browned off a bit, so early spring I decided to give
it a good treatment to try to bring it on again. I watered (every couple of
days for an hour or so) and fertilized (using "Buffalo blend" as recommended
by the grower).

This seemed to get the lawn greening up a bit, but as soon as I stopped
watering for a few days or we had a hot day (30 odd degrees) some patches in
the lawn start to "frizzle". The leaves curl up and look dry and start to go
white. Give it some more water at it comes back... Interestingly, the
patches do not seem to conincide with where there is only a small amount of
topsoil.

Now, with the lawn, the runners are pretty much on the surface - 30/40mm (my
mowing height) below the tops of the blades of the grass (I assume this is
normal?) but it was suggested to me I might try a light topdressing to bury
the runners and provide protection for the roots.

As an experiment I topdressed half the lawn - bottom line is that the top
dressing doesn't seem to have any affect on what I am seeing with regard the
frizzling or indeed on the growth of the lawn - it happens on both the
topdressed and the non-topdressed part of the lawn.

It pretty much seems obvious to me that given the shallow and sandy subsoil
and the lack of rain, unless I water pretty much every second or third day,
I won't be able to stop this frizzling from happening... but does anyone
have any other ideas?

Could I be missing certain elements/is what I am seeing a sympton of a Ph
problem in the soil? Is it worth getting the ph tested?

I'd like to keep the lawn soft under foot as I have a toddler who uses the
lawn daily.

Thanks for any advice.

Ciao,
Dave.