Christmas in Brisbane

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For Christmas we were in Brisbane, staying with friends Faith and Mark Kendall, their 13 week old son, Luca, and very friendly and excitable dog, Henry. I know Faith from the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, as I used to work with her there (she used to be the clinical lead OT in paediatrics) - they returned to their home in Australia a couple of years ago.

On Christmas Eve we all went to their church's evening service - Claire and I were slightly put out by the changes of words to most of the well-known traditional Christmas carols (must be Australian versions because everyone else seemed to know them). After the evening service we had mulled wine and minced pies back at the house - though the mulled wine must be a UK/European thing as we had to explain to most Aussie's what it is...

On the morning of Christmas Day Faith looked after Luca, while Claire and I were put on potato-&-veg-chopping and ham-cooking duty, and Mark looked after the other meat (chicken and lamb) being cooked on the bbq (Claire and I did wonder exactly how many people would be coming for lunch!). Throughout the morning, we had various members of Faith and Mark's families dropping round and had drinks with them out on the veranda, before sitting down to lunch - 11 of us in total. We all joined in with a Kendall family tradition (well, it started last year) of toasting something that each person was thankful for over the past year - seemed to Claire and me to be just a different kind of drinking game, although Faith and Mark assured me that it wasn't...
In the afternoon we had the traditional presents from under the tree - lots of people meant complete chaos in the living room, but it was all great fun.
Later on in the afternoon some of us went round to the neighbours for a swim in the pool - it was really quite cold, but on principle of being in Australia at Christmas, we felt it needed to be done!


We stayed with Faith and Mark until December 28th when we flew over to New Zealand.

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