TheBanyanTree: Australian Christmas

[Peter Macinnis]

Tonight, we went down the hill to Manly Oval, where some 8000 excited 
children attended sunset carols with fireworks on the local cricket 
ground. The oval nestles in a valley, down on the coastal flat.  The 
covers were over the pitch area (to protect it), and it was surrounded 
by hay bales which, by the time we left, had been reduced to a thin 
layer of hay covering most of the oval, as they had straw fights.

There were no camels on the oval, which was just as all their backs 
would surely have been broken.

Dusk in Sydney is marked by the migrations of fruitbats, flying to the 
coast to feed on fig trees.  Tonight, with a crescent moon below Venus, 
I knew as the band struck up the 1812 Overture (8 minutes in, to save 
time) that something interesting was going to happen.

The last time I saw the 1812 done there was 1988, when the School of 
Artillery was still located up on the eastern hill, and they brought in 
25-pound howitzers, firing blanks which still managed to blow out the 
windows on the Presbyterian Church across the park, and the rockets 
caused severe intestinal problems to the rainbow lorikeets that were 
flying in to roost.

We stood, looking west.  No lorikeets tonight, no cannon, just noisy 
fireworks and lots of mortar-fired stars.  The fruitbats just milled, 
out to the west, and poured through the valley as soon as the fireworks 
ended.  It takes a lot to stop a fruitbat.

Summer, and Christmas, are here.

peter


-- 
philosophers may stand to reason, I stand to compute
Peter Macinnis        petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
Feral word tinker on the right side of Oz at Manly NSW,
where they also surf who only stand and wade
http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com/