Memories of Christmas in hot climates
As the festive season approaches, thoughts turn to Christmas past in another hemisphere - the happy, the unexpected, and the mainly very hot.
One of the more bizarre Christmases I have had was stumbling down a mountainside in the pitch dark when a kangaroo stamped out a warning in the night. The ground shook with the force of it.
We guessed it was a male but we weren’t going to ask for ID. We couldn’t see it, we didn’t even know if we were walking towards it. It wasn’t happy, that’s for sure. But then neither were we.
It all started when I met a wonderful old friend at the Surveyor General in Berrima in New South Wales’ Southern Highlands (it’s Australia’s oldest continuously licenced inn, but I digress).
One thing led to another, and in the late afternoon we all walked up to a little settlement of houses at the top of a mountain, where my old mate is from. We landed up in the house of a friend of his. There, too, lived an utterly psychotic cattle dog called Dottie who, every time her owner left the room, dared anyone to so much as move a muscle.
If you sit still you’ll be right, her owner said casually – he wasn’t the one she was threatening to bite after all. Turned out he also kept a pet python until Dottie got the better of it.
Danger in the dark
It was pitch dark by the time we left and Dottie’s dad had to be cajoled into even lending us a torch. So much for Aussie hospitality eh? Anyway the batteries ran out within five minutes. And then came the kangaroo.
This was not a nativity play, or even a fable in the making. It was real life nerve-wracking, I’m not going to lie. It went on for what seemed like forever. We didn’t dare move, and the darkness bristled with threat as he pounded the earth. Then, silence. We inched forward again - we couldn’t stay there all night! But it felt like he could pounce any minute.
Luckily he didn’t. We somehow stumbled down the mountain unscathed; it wasn’t easy.
Hungry, tired and scratched by the bush, we got to the bottom to discover the entire town was shut, dark and quiet, sleeping off their Christmas dinners. There wasn’t even a packet of crisps to be had. Convivial Christmas feasts seemed very far away that year.
Having been born in a hot climate I can tell you Christmas traditions make much more sense in the northern hemisphere. For one thing cold weather is much better for hot food – it’s good eating weather!
In Australia it’s usually sweltering at Christmas - as I write the bitumen on the roads in my old home town is melting. It’s that hot.
For Aussies, prawns - served cold - and oysters are high on the list; hearty food is very hard to come at!
A different far north
The first Christmas I spent in Australia we went to see my sister in Cairns in Far North Queensland (FNQ, or Effin Q as the Aussies say). Stepping off the plane into that tropical heat was something else. It hits you like a blast furnace.
My sister, who had emigrated years before, was terribly excited at seeing far-away family again. She really wanted a traditional Christmas, with turkey and ham and trimmings.
I think we eventually did the Queensland seafood thing; I remember going to the seafood markets and marvelling at the huge mud crabs, glaring malevolently, claws bound (they can really damage a finger) and the piles of Moreton Bay bugs (a kind of slipper lobster, and delicious). It was all so fresh, and so exotic.
I also remember diving to the bottom of the swimming pool and holding my breath for as long as I could to try and cool down. And scrutinising the tops of the palm trees for the pythons my sister said coiled up there. I didn’t see any, but believe me they are there. Like the crocodiles.
Everything was vivid in its newness, it’s unfamiliarity. I soon became local on the Rocks, the historic part of Sydney Harbour where the first white settlers landed. It’s a place of historic charm now but in its early days it had all the brutality, opportunism, disease and treachery you’d expect.
It was here I learnt the power of Aussie informality, where construction workers rubbed shoulders with top barristers.
Snobbery was absolutely frowned on. You were all equal in the pub. I remember watching a pissed man pestering a senior government minister who had popped in for a quiet pint (on his own, no security detail). Eventually the luminary turned to the drunk and said, ‘Oh, fuck off mate.’ And he did. No worries mate.
The incident with the ham
Later still we did Orphans Christmas each year. All our friends who were far away from family would come for lunch and yes, I did a baked glazed ham (and got up at 5am, in the coolest part of the day, to do it). Of course there were prawns too.
Those were fun times. Old Rosie the labrador was a star character one year.
After a very long Christmas lunch that went well into the evening, the sound of bones crunching woke me around 4am. What, I thought, this isn’t the African plains, this is the suburbs of Canberra…
Soon all became clear. Thieving old Rosie had managed to get onto the kitchen counter and steal the rest of the ham from under its cover. She’d kept her brother Gus at bay and managed to scoff an obscene amount all on her own. She was gnawing the ham bone when I found her in the garden.
For days afterwards she lay on her back on the couch like a beached whale, her belly looked like she was carrying a large litter of puppies. She was shrouded in a cloud of labrador farts, but the best thing was the look on her face. She lay there smiling.
The incident with the Queen
Yes, that Queen, Elizabeth II. After another long lunch one summer, a friend got the idea he would write to her. Dear Queen, his letter began…
After imploring her to get rid of then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, he gave an impassioned plea for a group of us to be recognised for our contribution, as consumers, to the Australian wine industry.
And guess what. The Queen wrote back. Someone in her office clearly had a sense of humour. The reply came on thick, creamy Queen paper with the royal crest.
It was effortlessly polite. It said she couldn’t get rid of Tony Abbott, that was a matter for Australians, and any recognition of wine appreciation achievements should go to the Australian Honours list for consideration.
Our friend was ecstatic. Flushed with this success, he wrote to Putin. Putin didn’t respond.
Scotland at Christmas
And then eight years ago I found myself unexpectedly living in Scotland and Christmas made a whole new kind of sense. The Christmas lights twinkling on the frost and snow, the little kids bundled up like bright eskimos on Christmas lights nights, and the fact that traditional Christmas food is in its natural winter home.
I’d watch the snow fall on the Howff from my work window, creating a picture postcard. I’d listen to my late father-in-law reciting Rabbie Burns with unfailing passion and inflection, and it felt like something timeless. I’d see happy faces glowing by the firelight at Christmas, and it all made sense.
They say you never know what will happen next, and it’s true too that you never know when you will find new happiness.
And now it’s almost time to make new memories. This Christmas we will have a family table too, because now I am lucky enough to have a wonderful Scottish family. Some are no longer with us, but we’ll celebrate their memories. There will be laughter.
And yes, there’ll be traditional hot food. A lot of it. And I’ll count my blessings and thank my lucky stars. Here’s wishing you happy times in your house, too.