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Published: January 2nd 2008
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So there it was again, the Christmas silly season. Down in Oz (southern hemisphere means a hot, rather than a white Christmas) this means any excuse for Xmas drinks goes ! So, I've had invites to 2 sets of Christmas drinks, and 2 sets of lunches.... Most new year's resolutions die before new year's eve has arrived down here!
Plan for my Christmas was to head up to
Dunbogan NSW and spend time with Peter and his family. To say the all live ON the beach is saying too much, but they all live less than 500m away from the Pacific anyway ! Not a bad spot for Christmas !
Flew up to Newcastle, and then hopped on a shuttle bus to Laurieton. This being the Saturday before Christmas, it meant traffic, lots of it..... so the 3 hoir trip was stretched to 4 hours. At the end, Pat and Clem (Peter's parents) were kind enough to pick me up and give me the quick tour of the Dunbogan area. Well, the main road anyway, which is virtually the only road.
I did manage to get sun burnt on the Sunday, dispite having been in this country for so
many summers now. One never learns. The great thing here was that there was a choice of beaches, and neither of the 2 had many people on it! One afternoon there would've been less than 10 people on a beach that was at least 3 kms long! Very relaxing, compared to the busy beaches in say Sydney.
Pat and Clem have a great house, and the top floor balcony (the length of the house), has a great view over the bay/river, also giving them great sunset vistas in the late afternoon. Little by little the family trickled in, some I already knew, in particular Irish Mick, who apart from being a great craig, is also a great drinker. Just like his sister in Ireland, whom we staid with in September!
As Peter was still working for 2 days, we got to hang around the beach, do a bit of shopping, and generally just unwind, either with or without a drink in hand.
Christmas day started very early. I was sleeping in the lounge next to the tree, so Mick and Liz's kids came around at 6.30am to open their presents! Not much luck to get more sleep
with 2 over excited kids tearing of the paper of their presents I tell ya !
I think we were nack at Pat and Clem's before 7.30 am, for the first glass of bubbly wine, and a whole heap of additional presents! Also some other famliy traditions, such as very chemical and sugarful cereals..... luckily, the bacon and eggs were following closely ! Then, of course, of to the beach again !! Ended up going back to the beach twice that day, also seeing a largish octopus (head size approx 15cms)!
Apart from that we also saw kangaroos in the park, and a koala in Pat and Clem's garden.... the Ozzie countryside is full of surprises!
So all up a great Christmas. On boxing day I took the Countrylink train down to Sydney, starting at Kendall at 10am, and planned to get to Sydney before 5pm. Had a small delay, but apart from that it was a pretty cruisey trip. The leg room is much better than any cattle class flight I've ever had, but the lunch-in-a-plastic-box wasn't up to airplane standards....
Staid with Hedde, Barbara, and now 1 year old Kaitlyn for a few days.
Even went into the after Christmas sale madness in Bondi Junction on the second day, which is not recommended to anyone at any time! And on the second night, also worked up a hang over on red wine with some of Hedde's business partners.... I should know better by now...
Spent the Friday with Anthony, going to Maroubra beach (beach 2 for the holiday), and had dinner with the newly weds, Lisa and John, at a great Indian restaurant in Newtown.
Then, the Saturday.... in the end I did decide to pull my finger out, bite the bullet, etc etc , and hire a truck to move all my furniture and motorcycle down to Melbourne. Pretty much from one storage container to another.... apart from the bike that is. So I have asked myself a lot of times what the gain here would've been. Either way, I had to get back to Melb anyway, so saved a flight, and got the pleasure to:
a- Drive a truck again.
b- Drive to Melbourne again, 900kms of scenic roads
So there were some plusses to it, apart from the (semi automatic, with not much guts to get up the hill).
I was 2 hours faster with my car in October (9 hours driving instead of 11 now), but that one could keep up the speed when going up hill.
Important side note, I had a lunch stop at the
Dutch Shop in Smithfield, to do some vital stocking up of Dutch treats for the next few months!! The fun thing here is that from the outside, they've done up the warehouse as a bunch of Amsterdam canal houses. From the inside, the shop part is as daggy as the old neighbourhood grocers used to be in Holland, and the coffeeshop is as "original" as the old "brown" cafe's in Amsterdam were (no, not like the "coffeeshops")....
New year's eve was spent at
Federation Square in Melbourne with flatmate Narelle and a few friends (and thousands of others of course). Her boyfriend Andrew plaid with one of his bands,
Nudist Funk Orchestra there for new year's eve. All the events for new year's at fed Square are free... but also alcohol free... meaning that any plans to drink less in the new year, actually already start before the new year kicks in !!
The good thing here was that compared to Sydney, where everyone
flocks around the harbour to see the fireworks, there were a great deal less people around, so it was a lot easier to walk around and get a (soft) drink when you needed one.
Getting home after that was still hard, but at least when we got there, we had a enough drink at home to klink to the new year !
Lest I forget that on Dec 31st it was 41 degrees in Melbourne !! It was a lot cooler the day after, but still good enough for a dip in the bay (beach 3!).
So from Melbourne, a
happy new year to all of you !!
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