DeadVim

We lived just down the road from the 'Kingdom Hall Of The Jehovah's Witnesses' ... My Dad was working nights and they annoyed him once too often so he went up to the car park and bent all the windscreen wipers back.

It's one of my clearest memories from that time ...

In Exile

from what i've heard from locals about it the responses to halloween by australians are usually one of the following:

1) "we dont want that stuipid american tradition"
2) children asking for sweets at your house is no better than begging

whingers.

debbieuk

I love halloween !!! i always have a big fancy dress party decorate my whole house and garden and if i get trick or treaters the sweets are ready....only had 1 in 3 years though so dont lose alot of sweets

I buy my stuff from USA gets here faster than Oz online stuff...

I think it is better here as I can have a bigger party and the weather is better!!

Deb

In Exile

heathen!!

part of the charm of Halloween is the celebration of the season change. The end of Autumn and the coming of winter. The quick one two hit of Halloween and Bonfire Night was one of my favourite times in teh UK, and the cold weather made it much better, in my opinion.

In the same way that the Chritsmas ambiance just isnt right without the cold, neither is Halloween.

AlliF

Apparently they used to have the equivalent of bonfire night here but it was called Rocket night. Then the killjoys banned the sale of fireworks to the general public so it just fizzled out....

Japonica

What I miss the most is the decorated houses. Our old neighborhood in Canada was an older one (from the 50s), a mix of seniors, students, renters, blue collar workers, professionals, university staff, you name it, but most houses made some kind of effort--even if it was those garbage bag spiders, the toilet paper ghosts on trees to the ones who always went all out with floodlights, headless mannequins et al. I miss it.

We'll be putting decs out front, handing out candy, and carving the ubiquitous green pumpkin...

DeadVim

Banning the sale of fireworks to the public is fantastic for me, I can only imagine what the bogans around here would do, to say nothing of the bushfire risks.

If I wanna see rockets being fired I'm heading to these guys ...
http://www.qldrocketry.com/

16th October, I think I'll pop along.

Japonica

I love how they think it's an American tradition (I've heard that one before too)...er, not according to Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

KJCherokee

I don't recall Halloween being a big thing in England (I left in 1983, so maybe it's recent) and it certainly isn't big over here. We all dress up for Melbourne Cup day instead.

AlliF

We always had 'Neepy Lanterns' when we were little. Many a spoon was bent trying to dig out the insdes of a turnip for halloween And i got a sore belly eating the raw insides (seemed like a good idea at the time)
I think pumpkins would probably be a little bit easier to carve!

Halloween was always pretty popular in my corner of Scotland.Not seen much of it here in Melbourne except with other expats.

DeadVim

... Where everyone turns into a zombie by the end of the day ... In my experience

Dorothy

I wish I still had the photos of our house decorations. We used to do a real haunted house kind of thing complete with 6' skeleton partly buried under leaves. One year I had a trail of blood leading from the street up the driveway to the skeleton which had a big bloody knife sticking out. We used to have a CD of Vincent Price talking over music playing.

Actually, anything at this time of year makes me homesick. I love Thanksgiving (turkey would be my last meal), love apple picking and the leaves changing and the change in weather.

Japonica

Awesome! Can't beat good ol' Vincent!

Back in my late teens/early 20s I was sharing an apartment with a friend in hairdressing college. We "borrowed" some of his mannequin heads, painted red around the necks, and stuck them on sticks all around my mom's house. That and a giant rubber tarantula on a string that would fall on the kids at the front door.

The neighbors up the road had the dry ice cauldron, light show, and the adults dressed up as well...and the spooky music.

As for Thanksgiving...I miss it as much as Christmas really. I was back in Canada at this time last year...eating Mac apples (no, not the computer for those of you not in the know), bison smokies, and real pumpkin pie (not the less than Aussie version that I have to make with Kent pumpkins).

Mmm...big turkey dinner washed down with Growers Cider...okay, now I'm homesick...

In Exile

as much as I love halloween, i went to a halloween party a few years back and some petite girl came dressed as the chick from The Ring, Samara/Sadako.

I was genuinely freaked out and largely refused to speak to, or look at her.



what made it less freaky...but a bit more weird, was when I saw her later doing normal party stuff, like getting off with a bloke and shotgunning a can of beer - still dressed as the chick from the ring.

And also, what bloke actually gets off with the chick from The Ring!?!

DeadVim

An Ozzy Osbourne fan?