One of the things that takes some getting used to when you live in Australia, is the topsy-turvey seasons. This is particularly noticeable during the festive holiday season. In the UK, Christmas is a rare high-point in the otherwise bland miasma that is the British winter. In the UK, Xmas and the new year enable you to forget, temporarily, that you have another five months of low grey clouds and drizzle to go before it warms up for just long enough to remind everyone that there’s a yellow heat-giving orb in the sky. In the UK, Xmas is the interlude between acts one and two of the school year. In the UK the stores start their sales the nano-second the last late Xmas shopper is ushered out into the drizzle.

Down here though, it’s very different. In Oz, Xmas signifies the end of the year in more ways than one. The start of the Xmas break means the end of the school year and the beginning of the long summer holidays. Xmas is merely an (admittedly welcome) interlude to what, for most people, is at least two full weeks of work. It means six weeks of freedom for the kids and six weeks of keeping ‘em happy for the parents. It means driving south or north with a car stuffed to bursting with gear and a tinnie towed behind.

This blog entry continues here.