Christmas in Melbourne

I returned to Melbourne on the 20th December to spend Christmas with the family of a rowing friend of mine, Claire Sonnemann. She was due back in Australia on the 23rd, so to begin with I stayed with her older sister Cathy and her husband Hugh, and their three adorable daughters, Erica, Georgia and Maddy. They have a beautiful house in a lovely green suburb called Eaglemont. It was very quiet and suburban, very different from my previous Melbourne experience in the city and St Kilda, and it was absolutely great to relax for a few days, playing silly games with the kids who were getting excited about Christmas.

After a nightmarish flight, Claire and her boyfriend Dom arrived on the 23rd December, at which point I moved over to stay with them with her parents, Jim and Joan, who live just over the hill in the same suburb. Christmas Eve was great fun – brunch in Brunswick Street, a colourful street in the suburb of Fitzroy, full of cool bars and cafes and funky shops. Then we ventured into the city itself for some last minute Christmas shopping, and finished the day in style at a gorgeous Italian restaurant in Ivanhoe, the suburb next to Eaglemont.

Christmas Day itself passed in a blur of preparing food, eating food, drinking champagne and stopping young children from flinging themselves downstairs or pulling down the Christmas tree! It was noisy, but so much fun and I had a brilliant time getting to know Claire’s huge family. This was not as straightforward as you might think given that there were two sets of identical twins racing around the house!

You will all be pleased to hear that there was no BBQ-ing on the beach or anything like that – in fact there was actually snow on Christmas day, almost unheard of here at this time of year!

The dismal weather continued on Boxing Day and the 27th, as we headed to the Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch the test match. England having already lost the Ashes, we thought that no pressure might mean they actually won for a change, but no such luck! It was still a great atmosphere though, and the Barmy Army has to be seen (or heard) to be believed!

On my last full day in Melbourne, we drove out into the countryside of North-East Victoria, to the Sonnemann’s family farm near Beechworth. Finally the weather improved, and we had a lovely lunch in Beechworth and wandered around some of the farmland. This is very much gold-rush country, and you can still see the hillocks in the paddocks where the old-mine shafts were built. Sadly, as well as suffering the ravages of vast bushfires, Victoria is also in the midst of a severe drought and the countryside looked very yellow and dry. We saw deer, foxes and rabbits running around the dried up creek in search of water, but it was completely dried up. I also kept my eyes open for nuggets of gold, just in case! Needless to say I didn’t find any.