5 Great Things About Xmas in Queensland

1. Sticking your feet in the sand... on Xmas!

Yeah, it's hard not to love spending Christmas at the beach. Ask anyone in Brisbane where they're spending their festive season and you'll always get the same answer: "On the coast." We were lucky to get invited to stay with our friend's family on the Sunshine Coast at their house, a five-minute walk from the beach. There was no ocean swimming to be done though -- the waves were huge and scary, thanks to the tail-end of a cyclone that passed off the Queensland coast that week. The cyclone must have whipped the waves up something terrible, as the beach was aflurry in this strange bubbly foam, that broke off from the waves in chunks and flew around in the air like soap bubbles. We loved chasing it as much as the dogs who were visiting the beach.

2. Mangoes

Christmas coincides with another important time of year in Australia: mango season! At Christmas, people buy Queensland mangoes by the box... and they are as delicious as they are fun to peel and eat.

3. Jean shorts = unofficial Qld Xmas uniform

There were no Christmas sweaters to be seen this year... Christmas is a pretty informal event here. And truly, why bother getting all snazzed up to hop from house to house and eat and drink with family, friends and neighbours? People get more dressed up for Saturday night at a pub (or Melbourne Cup Day) than they do on Xmas. It was kind of fun!

4. Swimming pools in 30 degree weather

Need I say more?

5. Neighbourhood cricket games


Boxing Day was our first introduction to the peculiar game of cricket. There was a friendly neighbourhood game organized by one guy whose  family was visiting from Sri Lanka, where cricket is also a big thing. We were enlisted to help up the numbers (no previous experience required) and it was soon our turns to bat. First off, batting for cricket is nothing like baseball, where you hold the bat above your shoulder and watch the bad pitches go by - well, at least this game wasn't like that. Lesson 1: You can swing for any pitch at all (I hit a ball from a pitch that came in behind my head) and even if the ball bounces while on its way to you, it's still fair game. Lesson 2: If you DO hit the ball, you don't have to run if you think your hit is kind of crap. But if you do choose to run, the strangest thing is, you're required to run WITH the giant paddle... which is easier said than done when your instincts have trained for your entire lifetime to toss the bat aside and RUN as soon as you hit the ball. That and you're running back and forth, back and forth between a couple of sticks, with, as Bill Bryson describes it*, "a mattress strapped to each leg". Fielding is even more of a hoot. Depending where you choose to stand (which is anywhere, unlike a game of old-fashioned baseball), which means the ball may NEVER come to you. Which means it's the perfect game to play with a beer in your hand. Which is probably the reason why this country likes cricket so much. We have no idea which team won, but we did manage to work on our tans a bit while waiting for the ball to arrive in our vicinities.

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There are lots of other great things about spending Xmas here in Oz, and lots of little differences to what we're used to. We found it interesting that preparing a stuffed turkey isn't really a thing at all here -- and Christmas lunch seemed to be the thing to do, rather than Christmas dinner. Prawns (aka shrimp) and salads replaced the turkey and potatoes (though we missed the mashed potatoes!). It was a lovely hot day made up of eating, swimming, and random neighbours dropping by the house -- and we made our families just a tad jealous via Skype -- but perhaps just because it wasn't at all like what we're used to, it only vaguely felt like Christmas. And of course, we missed our families and friends, but maybe we'll be back in the snowy north for a white Christmas sooner than we think. You never know. Hope you all had a happy holidays! xoxo D&A

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Happy holidays! [image from stonehousecollection.com]

* Oh yeah. While we're on the topic, Bill Bryson's unique take on cricket always makes us laugh....

"After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind) I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry. It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavours look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players - more if they are moderately restless. It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning.


Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it to centre field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt toward the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to to handle radio-active isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattress's strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stand there all day, and, as a rule, does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and every one retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket.


The mystery of cricket is not that Australians play it well, but that they play it at all. It has always seemed to me a game much too restrained for the rough-and-tumble Australian temperament. Australians much prefer games in which brawny men in scanty clothing bloody each other's noses. I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished over night and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other. 


And the thing is, it would be a much better game for it."

-- from In A Sunburnt Country, one of our very favourite books

For the second leg of the race, you'll be heading to Queensland...

Our second stop of the trip was the one I was most excited for: Far North Queensland. It's a beautiful spot that holds many great memories and adventures, having living in Port Douglas for more than four months back in 2007. I've been anxious to revisit our former home to see how fast things might have changed. We also had a trip booked to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef (a must-do!) and rented a car so we could drive into the leafy wilderness of Daintree National Park. It promised to be a great couple of days.

We were also hoping to find a little more sunshine and heat up in the north, after our previous day in the cold and wet Blue Mountains. Well, we got our wish. As soon we stepped off the plane, a steaming wall of humidity hit us. We stepped out onto the tarmac in Cairns, surrounded by sugarcane fields and lush green hills under dark blue rainclouds. Somehow the colours are all a little deeper in the tropics -- maybe it's the sunlight? Right away I felt like I'd returned home.

We made a brief stop through Cairns, zooming past the big Captain Cook doing his Hitler-esque salute in our rental car, and like that, we were in the centre of town (smaller than I remembered!). We took a stroll down the boardwalk along the seashore, and I remembered why I steered us away from getting a hotel in Cairns - the massive unsightly tidal mudflats, that sleepy yet mildly rough vibe, and souvenir junk shops at every turn. (Probably with some interesting history though: after our first trip to Australia, my great uncle Alan told me some great tales about his backpacking experiences in Cairns back in the 1960s, when Cairns was just a tiny mining and fishing outpost at the end of the railway line. There were so few places to sleep that he had to take turns sharing a bunk with the miners, who worked all night and slept by day!)

What Cairns did have was plenty of al fresco restaurants serving beer and thin-crust pizza -- perfect on a hot day. With full bellies we set off on the winding oceanside road north to Port Douglas, stopping nearly every five minutes for another look at the insanely gorgeous views of the Coral Sea from beaches and cliffs.We finally reached the turn-off to Port Douglas, familiar territory with its jungly main road and blue-footed scrubfowl pecking about under the roadside palms. We arrived at the Sheraton, an stunning tropical paradise of a hotel (albeit with interior decorating that's a wee bit '80s), with a swimming pool that flowed under footbridges, around palm trees, and stretched around about 6 different hotel buildings! We settled in, checked out the hotel grounds a bit (we got lost there more than a few times!). Later we ended up on Port Douglas's main street, which was pretty much as it was when we left in 2007, with many of the same restaurants and bars still around, and a few new additions.

The next day was our reef trip, which we booked with Port Douglas's reef trip juggernaut, Quicksilver, for the main reason that they have a massive multi-storey platform built out on the reef, so my mom could check out the reef from outside the water, and my dad and I could snorkel it up. When we arrived at the platform, they recommended at this time of year we wear lycra "stinger suits" for snorkelling, to avoid deadly jellyfish stings (and a few had been spotted here and there), so we paid the $5 while my mom laughed at us in our head-to-toe black spandex suits that even had hoods and mittens. My mom went off into one of the 'semi-submersible submarines' (like a skinny glass-bottomed boat that sits low in the water) and we hopped into the water... it was beautiful. We weren't sure if the coral would be really damaged thanks to daily snorkel trips, but there was so much life - coral and fish - and colours everywhere. One guy saw a shark, but unfortunately (?) we missed it. We saw a couple of turtles from the sub, and a big cuttlefish, which was cool. My highlight was a bunch of clownfish and their babies, hiding in a sea anemone. I was the last one out of the water in the afternoon when the ship honked its horn for everyone to come in.... it was so great to explore the Reef again!

Our third day up in FNQ was a road trip day, and we took the car north all the way to Cape Tribulation, to the end of the road for cars, at least (it's where the 4WD track starts up Cape York). We checked outthe ancient Daintree Rainforest, taking a crocodile-spotting cruise on the murky Daintree River -- unfortunately not seeing any crocs, as we learned they're harder to spot at high tide (strike one) and don't sun themselves on the riverbanks so much in the summer (strike two), but we did see some cool birds and plants, and learned all about the mangroves. We also stopped at incredible Cape Trib beach (sadly my parents aren't as big beach bums as I am... I could've stayed there all day!), ate strange fruit ice cream at the Daintree Ice Cream Company, and wandered through the jungle boardwalks in search of wildlife. My dad provided the mosquito bait as he ran ahead through the boardwalks, while my mom and I hung back and inspected odd-looking spiders and noises in the bushes. It turns out, she is a bit of a lizard whisperer, and lured out all kinds of crazy reptiles along the trails on our trip. No cassowaries this time (maybe I got everyone's hopes up too much after my previous encounter?) but well, there are only about 1200-1500 left in the wild in Australia. And you really have to take things at a more leisurely pace to see these creatures....