TheBanyanTree: Australian Christmas

[Teague, Julie Anna]

Lovely, Peter.  And you've reminded me that I need another cup of 
coffee because my first thought was, "Gee, what do they do to celebrate 
the Fourth of July in the middle of winter?"  Um, yeah.  Nevermind.

Lovely way to celebrate Christmas.

Julie


Quoting Peter Macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au>:

> 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/
>