I have loved celebrating my first southern hemisphere Christmas and New Year for 38 years. I celebrated my last one aged 24 when making plans to go OS (overseas) as we called ‘doing’ Europe. I had finished my nursing training and had then spent nine months working in a small Melbourne suburban hospital. I had also just managed to extricate myself from a fairly disastrous and volatile five-year relationship and I was looking forward to my new adventure.
That all seems so long ago. I am such a different person – much older and much wiser – although it certainly would not take much to be wiser than that confused and unworldly 24-year-old trying to find her way in a rapidly changing world. Melbourne is a very different place and I much prefer it now.
Soon after arriving in Melbourne on the 15th December, I was struck down by The Lurgy that left me prostrate for four days barely capable of stringing more than two words together. However the evil mixture, called Fire Tonic, recommended by my friend helped to get me back on my feet and so on the fifth day I staggered out blinking in the sunshine
like a demented wombat to meet my sister in East Melbourne. She had treated us to a “Welcome back to Melbourne” visit to the Johnston Collection and this was something I was not prepared to miss.
The website explains that “The Collection is the legacy of William Robert Johnston (1911-1986) an antique dealer and collector of beautiful things. He loved objects that were unusual and visually arresting.” He left his houses and collection to the people of Victoria, directing that a trust be set up after his death and the collection rearranged three times each year. Each Christmas there is a theme and different groups of artisans are invited to decorate each room in the house creating new works to interpret the collection in a different way. There is always a quirkiness and a wonderful sense of humour employed in the arrangements. This Christmas was no exception. That is all I will write because I would hate to spoil the surprise. After a wonderful afternoon spent immersing ourselves in such fantasy and fabulousness, I finally felt Christmassy, although I was so tired form all the excitement that I had to go straight back to bed for the rest of the day.
We packed up Alan and drove him to North Fitzroy to spend 3 nights over Christmas with my sister and her partner. We enjoyed the rush of cold air as we turned the newly fitted air-conditioning on, delighting in the luxury and comfort as we drove through a Melbourne beginning to get very hot. After 12000km with no air con we were thoroughly excited about it.
I have always enjoyed going into town to see the Christmas decorations and shop windows. That alongside being with special people and eating and drinking together are my favourite aspects of Christmas. When young, Mum and Dad would pack us all up into the car to drive the 12 miles into the centre of Melbourne to see the Myers windows. As Dad drove, we children counted Christmas trees, with those on the left hand side of the car competing to spot more than those counting the right hand side ones. With six siblings in the car it eventually became quite noisy until either Mum or Dad would yell “Calm down!”. Myers still decorates their windows and I loved this year’s theme that was very Melbourne and quirky, featuring an inner city back yard and various Melbourne landmarks.
Christmas Eve was unpleasantly hot, made more so by a strong north wind. The only way to cope with this sort of hot wind is to shut all the windows, pull down the shades and keep the air con or fans blowing. If you open doors and windows the house just heats up quicker as it fills with hot air. Friends arrived for a lunchtime get together and we stuffed ourselves with a variety of starters, simply divine oysters, fish barbequed to perfection, salads and baked potatoes followed by my sister’s scrumptious calorie- and alcohol-laden mango desert washed down with a copious amount of bubbly, wine and beer. That evening as we waited for the house to cool sufficiently to sleep in reasonable comfort, we strolled through the local park where I exclaimed over the brush tail possums sitting at the base of almost every tree, unbothered by us walking by. Dotted throughout the park were groups of young people sitting on picnic rugs eating, drinking and chatting; just enjoying the cool evening and the relief from hot houses. When I first arrived in London I was stunned to find the parks fenced off and gates locked at dusk. There are no fences around Melbourne parks and they are wonderful places to stroll or to sit on hot summer evenings.
We all emerged very slowly on Christmas morning as the temperature outside rose to 38˚ and the north wind started to blow again. A friend arrived to join us for a breakfast of freshly cut fruit, panetone and prosecco – a perfect start to the day that took us all morning.
We contacted friends and rellies in the UK and compared notes on time, weather and food while cursing the Australian internet that caused our conversations to be interrupted at frequent intervals with “You’re breaking up”, “I can hear you, can you hear me?”, “Switch the video off, you’re pixillating” or “Hang up, I’ll call you back”. While most people sat down to dinner in the middle of the day, we set off on a 60km drive to pop in on various relatives and to the house Ian and I are house-sitting to water the garden and feed and cuddle the indulged Burmese cat called Willow.
Our duties completed and while so close to the bay we just had to dip our toes in the water – just because we could.
Arriving back to base at 6pm, it was time for Christmas dinner. All four being cooks, we enjoy getting together to cook the meal while chatting, drinking wine and generally having such a lovely, relaxing time we are suddenly surprised by the lateness of the hour. We cooked butterfly prawns with a chilli dressing sitting on a bed of grilled greens. Ian prepared salad and pudding was the leftover mango extravaganza from the day before. We finished eating about 10pm and then went for another stroll. With no one slaving over a hot stove, not a turkey or Christmas pudding within Coo-ee, our Australian Christmas fare was just perfect for this weather.
The next few days passed in a blur. I recovered completely from The Lurgy but passed it on to Ian which has now wiped him out for several days. I met up with a friend from my nursing training days. We had been looking for each other for many years only to discover we were staying about 2km from each other in south east Melbourne. She is a water baby too and we spent hours swimming together in the bay and catching up. It is quite extraordinary to meet up after 25 years and slot comfortably into each other’s company as though our last meeting was only a week ago. Ian and I also caught up with our whale watching buddies from Maryborough in Queensland. They live just around the bay about 20 minutes’ drive away. Of course, I managed another swim while there.
Ian was too ill to participate in the New Years’ Eve celebrations and so I abandoned him into the care of Willow the cat and joined Jackey and Jules at a party in an 11th floor apartment overlooking Melbourne’s docklands. As we munched our way through a sumptuous spread and consumed too much bubbly, we had a spectacular view of the gathering crowds and boats, a sunset that kept getting better and then the fireworks display that seemed to explode all around us. With the colours and lights reflecting in the glass of the skyscrapers, it was even more spectacular.
It has been a wonderful end to 2016, our year of adventure and travel, and a fantastic start to 2017, only marred by Ian and I being apart on New Year’s Eve for the first time since we met in 2000. However, he will be better soon and ready to send out his next missive. For a Londoner, a hot Christmas and New Year is very odd.
We wish you all a wonderful 2017 and hope that it is a year of adventure, joy and hope.
1 January 2017
alicecoyle 