Yule at the pool

We’ve spent the last five days in Melbourne with the family of George & Anna, who made us really welcome and showed us great hospitality. They live in Mount Eliza, a suburb of Melbourne to the southeast of the city. The day after we arrived, I went into the city by train and joined the last minute Christmas shoppers thronging the shopping centres and streets in the sunshine. The Salvation Army was much in evidence with many brass ensembles playing carols on street corners, just like I would have been at home on Grafton Street on Christmas Eve (well, almost just like..)

On Christmas Eve, we went to watch the Penguin Parade on Phillip Island. This is a huge attraction every evening as hordes of people turn up to watch the penguins make their way from the sea to the burrows in the sand dunes where their chicks have spent all day waiting for their parents to return and feed them. The whole spectacle takes about an hour from the time the first wet bedraggled birds lurch up the beach to the time when they are all back in their burrows, but because the timing is so unpredictable it involved about two hours’ waiting on a cold beach for their arrival!

Christmas Day was spent with George & Anna and their family, a huge meal with antipasti, cannelloni, roast pork and all the trimmings, followed after a suitable interval by a swim in the pool and then another meal of cold seafood - oysters au naturel and Kilpatrick, huge prawns, smoked salmon and more.

Tomorrow morning (Saturday 27th) we tear ourselves away from this fantastic hospitality and great food and set off very early on the long (911km) drive along the Hume Highway to Sydney where we will spend the next two nights. More from there anon....