To fill in a few cracks and crevices in the schedule before our flight to Tasmania, I wanted to set down a few more “first impressions” while they are on my mind. First, Christmas here in Australia takes some getting used to for those raised in the northern hemisphere. A lot of getting used to, actually. The primary reason is the massive disconnect between the themes of the traditional Christmas carols (e.g. snow, Jack Frost, bleak mid-winter, etc.), and the plain evidence on every side that summer is daily gathering strength. Holiday decorations have been in the stores virtually since our arrival here in October, taking up more space every week, in fact, since Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving don’t intervene to slow the momentum of the Christmas build-up. By mid-December check-out clerks in all the shops sport Santa hats, though they sometimes remove them to mop their brow, unless it’s a modern store, in which case the piped-in carols must be turned up to compete with the thrum of the air conditioning.
Fortunately, some here do acknowledge the obvious: the weather outside is not frightful at all; it’s magnificent, and it always has been thus for Australians at Christmas. Below is the second verse to “Australian Jingle Bells,” which we sang with gusto at an outdoor carol service on Christmas Eve. A swaggie, or swagman, is a tramp who carries his bedroll (swag) with him.
Engine’s getting hot; we dodge the kangaroos,
The swaggie climbs aboard, he is welcome too.
All the family’s there, sitting by the pool,
Christmas Day the Aussie way, by the barbecue.
And here is something you will never read about in a travel book: the amazing varieties of Australian honey. Back in the US, the most common form is just generic honey. Clover honey is also widely available, but generally costs a bit more. Only rarely, and for exorbitant prices will you come across anything wilder than that—fireweed honey, say, or blackberry. By contrast, our local supermarket unselfconsciously offers half a dozen varieties, all reasonably priced, produced from the blossoms of various species of eucalypts. I’ve only tasted two so far, and they were deliciously different; I mean to try every available variety by and by. I’m told the ironbark honey is the one with a flavor to really raise your eyebrows.
I have never, ever seen bats like those they have here in Melbourne. The week before we left our home on Bainbridge Island I discovered there was a bat that loved our side yard. At dusk he (or she) would fly loop after loop by our front door, hunting insects, but to me, this creature never was more than a brief, dark shape in the twilight. By contrast, the bats (grey-headed flying foxes—Pteropus poliocephalus) here in Melbourne are stupendous. We were taking a walk in the city the other evening, and were stopped dead for approximately 15 minutes as we watched the flying foxes sweep overhead in waves, just above the rooftops. We could distinctly hear the whoosh and flap of their leathery wings as they passed in their hundreds or thousands, all in the same direction, as if the dinner bell had been rung in some distant part. They routinely range 20 – 50 kilometers (12 – 30 miles) in search of fruit and nectar. Local attitudes toward the flying foxes are ambivalent, since the animals can damage or strip fruit trees that have been lovingly tended in this city where every drop of water is precious. But for us new arrivals it was certainly a moving experience to see so many bat-shaped sillhouettes passing overhead in the balmy December twilight.
--originally posted 12/2008
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