One of the main attractions of moving to Australia has got to be the outdoor lifestyle. Australia has miles and miles and miles of golden beaches, hectares and hectares of bush, hundreds of national parks, scenic rolling hills, serene countryside and stunning hinterlands. All of which is, of course, made even more enjoyable by the [...]
Christmas
It’s the last Friday before Christmas and certainly the festive season is about to begin. For some people, but not all, today was their last day at work and they won’t be going back until January 6. This year, unusually, I’ve decided to join them and there is a very good reason for that. Me, [...]
I’ve written about Christmas shopping before and presented some cost comparisons between our two countries. You can see those posts here: The Cost of Toys in Australia Australia versus the UK: Christmas Shopping Compared The first post, as you can probably tell, concentrated on children’s toys, after all, that’s where most of the money goes [...]
My first ever Christmas in Australia was during a holiday here in 2005. Here’s me, Mrs Bobinoz and the back of Elizabeth’s head in a picture taken on Boxing Day of that year… Yes, Christmases are a little different here. A few days later, we were on the beach, Elizabeth just loved playing in the [...]
Summer arrived with the weekend, and we certainly had the weather to match; temperatures have been hitting around 32°C. Tomorrow, Tuesday, the forecast is scorchio; we are told temperatures here in Brisbane could hit 40°C and elsewhere around Queensland could get as high as 45°. We are talking about temperatures in excess of 100°F and [...]
Three years ago on January the 1st, for some very crazy reason, I started this blog. The starting the blog bit possibly isn’t the crazy idea, but the date is. It means that I now spend every blog birthday nursing a hangover. My many thanks to Mark and Louise, the hosts, and everyone else who [...]
Here in Australia the closest you will get to John Lewis or Debenhams is a store called Myer. We also have a store called David Jones, but today I’m talking about Myer because they went to the trouble of putting on a Christmas parade here in Brisbane. Apparently, they’ve been doing this kind of parade [...]
Not only is Christmas in the middle of summer here in Australia, but they also have school summer holidays at Christmas time too! Yes, I know that makes sense, summer holidays in winter would be stupid! But at the same time, a six-week summer holiday break with Christmas slap bang in the middle of it [...]
