Christmas in Melbourne

Christmas is cold. That’s just how it is supposed to be. But what do we have here? 35°C heat? What?!??! It's just wrong!!!

We arrived in Melbourne a couple of days before Christmas and are house sitting for a lovely friend who is in Sydney for Christmas. It's very nice to have a home for Thomas’s first Christmas and, given that it just doesn’t feel like Christmas to us at all, we decided to embrace the difference and go for a full out Aussie Christmas.

An Aussie Christmas means “barbies” and seasonal fruit. Seafood is very popular (what crazy person wants to eat a roast turkey with all the trimmings in this heat?), in particular prawns, usually bought fresh on Christmas Eve from the market. The markets in Melbourne are fantastic and a really great experience. We had been advised to go early so set out at the crack of dawn on Christmas Eve complete with our borrowed granny shopping trolley in tow. I am happy to say that pretty much the entirety of our Christmas food was bought on Preston market from a variety of stalls. A combination of tiger, king and banana prawns, steak, kangaroo (we had to try it), salad, cheeses, sausages, bread and lovely fresh seasonal fruit (mangoes, strawberries, blueberries, cherries) to go with our pavlova.

Melbourne centre on Christmas Eve was buzzing with festive spirit. It's a pretty city centre with free tram travel around its core. The older trams on the city centre loop, providing a free guided tour, add a lovely ambiance to the place.

There are Christmas decorations everywhere and some of the shops, such as Myers, go all out in their window decorations. We even had a visit to Father Christmas. There is something rather bizarre about visiting Father Christmas in the heat! My brain was very confused!

It is difficult when travelling to carry much in the way of Christmas gifts or decorations but we did our best to improvise.

Christmas Day was 35 degrees! Hot! It felt very strange to be wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip flops to us. Luckily we had a (cool) hot tub to dip into, which Thomas loved. I’ve certainly never done that on Christmas day before!

In true Aussie style we “threw the prawns on the barbie” for lunch followed by steak, kangaroo and sausages for dinner, pavlova, sorbet and fruit for dessert. All polished off with some of Australia’s finest red and rosè.

It didn't feel like Christmas at all but it has certainly been a very lovely day. We have enjoyed the simplicity of the occasion and spending the day together. Thomas's first Christmas and one for the memory books.