G’day!
Welcome to Letters From the Road, letter number 55, and happy holidays! It’s Christmas, and we’re spending it at the Emu Beach Caravan Park with 217 of our closest friends and family.
Letters From the Road is the story of the road trip around Australia that I took with my wife and two boys back in 2019.
The story comes to you in weekly installments, featuring the journal entries I wrote during the trip. The journal entries are word-for-word, and you’ll see them highlighted in the letter.
If you missed any letters and would like to catch up, you can find the other 54 letters here, riding in the back of a fire truck with Santa.
Finally, you might notice the button in your letter. I’ve cobbled together an electronic tip jar, so if you enjoy receiving letters have some spare change lying around, anything you would care to leave would be a rippa.
And I do realise that tips are generally not a thing in Australia, except at foofy cafes that have started asking for them, because apparently $5 coffees and a credit card surcharge fee are not enough to keep a couple baristas well paid.
Luckily, I’m an American.
Be well,
Luke
24 December 2019 - Albany, WA
A van just drove through the caravan park. It was covered in lights, had a sled strapped to the top, and Christmas music blared from the stereo. Welcome to Christmas at the Emu Beach Caravan Park.
I’ve never spent Christmas at a caravan park. With 2019 being a year of firsts, however, I suppose the experience fits. It’s a reasonable bookend to a year where we’d done so much that was out of the ordinary.
We chose to spend our holiday there because it’d be easy and convenient, a sanitized form of camping with flushing toilets and a jumping pillow, and more importantly, because they had space for us. Plus we were vagabonds, far from home, so we had to stay somewhere.
Why other people, with the option to stay anywhere else including simply staying home, made the choice to stay at the Emu Beach was beyond me. It seemed the way you’d spend Christmas if forced from your home, sheltering from a forest fire or a civil war.
Christmas is a family affair, and you are surrounded by people at the caravan park, but other than the ones you came with, they’re not your people. For example, at one point I found myself in the communal bathroom with a hairy guy in a singlet and an old man. The boys were routinely at the playground battling for swings with 17 other kids.
In some ways, caravan park Christmas is like Christmas on steroids, and 149 cousins and relatives you don’t know have turned up.
People must have their reasons, though, because every last camping spot and plastic cabin were occupied, and the park hummed with activity and energy.
After we arrived and got set up, Katie and I left the boys to try and survive the park for a couple of hours on their own, so we could do some frantic last minute shopping.
We headed for downtown Albany and it was busy, full of other people doing the same as us. We’d been living in a tent for three months, and typically somewhere in the bush, so I felt reasonably at peace with having to undertake the shopping of shame.
Our boys knew not to expect vast bounties of stuff on Christmas mornings, armies of army men and robots, electric video game delights, bee-bee guns and remote control zeppelins. Which is good; Santa appreciates practical lads.
But Henry and Oscar had been good little boys, more or less, so we thought that a few gifts were in order.
Albany is the fourth largest city in Western Australia, nestled right between Geraldton and Kalgoorlie in terms of size. Despite this stature on the leaderboard, with just over 31,000 people, it’s not a large place by any means. On Christmas eve, however, the little downtown was bustling and you could have sworn that half of the Albanians - I think that’s what they call themselves? - were out on the main strip called York Street.
Albany is a lovely town. The downtown where we shopped is set on the northern shore of the quiet and regally named Princess Royal Harbour, in between two tall green hills called Mount Clarence and Mount Melville. York Street slopes down to the water’s edge, so whenever you burst forth from one of the packed shops, you are greeted with a view of the calm waters and the hills on the other side of the harbour.
One can imagine the sight it would have been to see the harbour full of huge ships, as it was during World War I. Albany was the last port of call for Australian troop ships departing for the long six week journey to the battlefields in Europe. On one day in 1914, 36 ships would have filled the harbour, and well wishers would have flooded the streets and the waterfront.
As we bustled from shop to shop, searching for some travel appropriate gifts for the boys, the harbour was quiet. But the streets were filled with cars and the footpaths crammed with people like us, poor souls who had decided to spend a beautiful Christmas eve shopping.
Not long after Katie and I returned from town, Santa showed up at the caravan park. He was a bit early - it wasn’t even dark out yet - and arrived not riding high atop an ornate sleigh, festively decorated with holly and bells and pulled by hefty reindeer.
Instead he rode in the back of an old fire engine that was bedecked with a few strands of tinsel, a couple of ladders and a fire extinguisher, and a sign saying that it was available for parties, balls or hens nights. There was no mention of delivering presents.
This was no magical fire engine, it had a man wearing a fluorescent yellow shirt driving. The high visibility workwear outed the man as not someone from the North Pole, rather an Australian. I knew this because in Australia, it is customary that anyone working in the vicinity of a factory or warehouse, or driving something, rolling bins out to the kerb, or using a lawn mower or whipper snipper, has to wear hi-vis workwear so they can be seen from 500 metres away.
Some men, I think they wear hi-vis just in case.
If Santa had a workshop in Australia, which might be a good idea considering how far away it is from the North Pole, I can picture it full of little elves dressed in fluorescent yellow and orange. The jaunty hats and lively shoes might be in question as well - something to be discussed with WorkSafe at the very least.
Santa eventually exited the fire truck and set up in a chair to meet with excited children. We encouraged the boys to say hello, if for no other reason than the fact that Santa was giving away candy. Even with that carrot, it was a hard ask.
The boys appeared bored with Santa, who showed up at the caravan park tonight. Why bored? Henry doesn’t believe anymore, but Oscar? I’m not sure. He probably doesn’t believe either, because of his older brother, but you never can tell.
How does this work, who gives up the ghost first?
It’s easy, I guess, when you’ve got one kid who says they don’t believe and at some point you can just say, ‘ok, well done sussing that one out’. But what about one kid who maintains belief until they are too old for it (and what would be considered too old?), or doesn’t but doesn’t say anything? What happens then?
I can’t imagine the parents just continuing on, until the kid simply breaks.
Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for this, but if you ignore it for long enough, the problem eventually solves itself, one way or the other.
Christmas dinner has traditionally been a big deal in my family, with days spent baking and cooking, culminating in a big sit down meal. There would be multiple roast meats, a green bean casserole with crunchy onions on top, bread rolls, pies and cookies, and someone would always make cranberry sauce for some unknown reason. I would be willing to bet that more cranberry sauce is thrown in the bin at holidays than is actually eaten.
We would be attempting our own mini-version of this, best we could from the road and with the limited resources of our camp kitchen.
I decided to attempt to slow cook a lamb shoulder using our gas barbecue. The good people at Weber who made the barbecue said on their website that of course this could be done, however I’m sure they’d also say that their barbecue would slice bread for you and make coffee in the morning.
The endeavour required lots of puttering around the campsite and drinking beer, keeping constant track of the state of the roast by peering and poking at it, which wasn’t a terrible way to spend an hour or two. Katie made mashed sweet potatoes to complete the meal.
I cooked a lamb shoulder on the bbq for dinner, with mashed sweet potatoes. It wasn’t terrible. Hard to cook a shoulder on a gas bbq, but had to try.
And after all the effort, our dinner on Christmas eve wasn’t terrible.
This was a slight departure from Australian tradition. Because Christmas is a summer holiday, people tend to lean toward pre-smoked hams or grilled meats, which will keep your kitchen cool on a hot afternoon.
You can also count on someone having prawns, the stereotypical shrimp on the barby. I don’t know if this is where the saying comes from, but you could find them all over the place at Christmas time.
After dinner, we wandered through the hedges to the beach to watch the sunset. The waves of the King George Sound were gentle, and the sun setting made the water shine colours of white and gold. It was a moment of peace after the din of the children that was always in the background at the park, or the holiday music that Katie always insisted on having rolling in the background.
It was nearly 10 o’clock by the time the sun dipped down below Mount Clarence to the west, and when it did the four of us retreated to the comfort of our tent to huddle together, eat popcorn, and watch the movie A Christmas Story, the greatest Christmas movie of all time, on a laptop computer propped up by a box.
Australian Christmases have always been missing just a little something for me, a little ambiance, a small hole in the experience because it falls during the summer.
When you see Christmas portrayed in the movies or on TV, there’s snow, bad sweaters, someone falling on ice or getting nearly impaled by an icicle - you know what I am talking about. Set all of that in the summer, and it just doesn’t seem right, like a cheeseburger without the cheese, or going to the pub and ordering a chocolate milk.
When we awoke in our tent on Christmas morning, the day had dawned not gray and cold, but sunny and fine. Snow was traded for sand. The beach was just over the scrub of the peppermint hedge, and if you listened closely, you could hear the waves. And I honestly couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t too bad.
Santa had come in the night, making a stealthy return in his fire truck while we were sleeping. He left gifts for the boys in the back of the camper trailer, a suitable replacement for a tree. I wondered where Santa had left gifts for other kids around the part sleeping in tents - maybe scattered around the front door or under their parent’s car?
Katie and I had agreed to largely forego gifts to each other. It was partly a necessity, as we never had time for shopping, much less had time apart from each other to purchase gifts. We also recognised how lucky we were to be doing what we were doing, basically spending a year on vacation, and spending it with each other.
25 December 2019 - Christmas Day
Christmas day at the Emu Caravan park. I can see one family, all of them dressed up nice. Mom is in a big red dress. Dad and kids are all wearing Santa hats.
Lots of kids riding around on shiny new bikes. Scooters. Sounds of happy children coming from all directions.
Some guy putting deodorant on out of the trunk of his car.
Caravans, vans, awnings, tents decorated with tinsel and other stuff. People trying to make an effort.
Christmas music coming from all around, though it’s now all drowned out by ‘I love it when you call me senorita’ coming from the pop-top next door. This from the same guy who was up having a phone conversation at 4am.
Not wanting to attempt making another middling holiday meal out of our camp kitchen, we decided to volunteer for the afternoon at the Albany Free Community Christmas Luncheon.
I’d seen a flier posted at a campsite somewhere in the past couple of weeks looking for volunteers, and decided to email the organiser. I very quickly received a response from Steve Marshall of the Grace and Glory Ministry, saying they’d be happy to have our help on the day.
Steve and his partner Karen had been running the Christmas lunch in Albany since 2005. It is completely organised by volunteers and serves food donated from the community. We had no idea what to expect, so when we arrived at the venue we were astounded at the size. A large hall had been set up to serve several hundred people, all at long tables set with white tableclothes, real silverware, and decorated with tiny reindeer and Christmas trees.
It was positively lovely.
Volunteered at the Albany Community Lunch.
I cut bread rolls and roast beef. Katie and the boys buttered rolls and did a few other odds and ends.
There were so many volunteers that we were almost unneeded, but we pitched in any way that we could. During a break in my roll cutting, I wandered around watching all the other volunteers in action in the kitchen area, cooking food, doing prep work, setting the tables, and preparing desserts.
The desserts included all sorts of different cakes and things, but the ones that really got my attention were the pavlovas - there were more pavlovas than I’d ever seen before.
If you’re not familiar with the pavlova, let me explain. It’s a meringue cake with a soft, marshmallowy centre that’s then covered with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Any old fruit will do, but berries and passion fruit are customary, and add that explosion of colour to the angelic white cake.
They’re as beautiful to look at as they are to eat, and they’re as quintessentially Australian a dish as prawns on the barby.
Unless, of course, you’re a New Zealander, in which case the “pav” is a Kiwi invention that Australians have egregiously co-opted and claimed as their own.
One fact is agreed upon: the dessert is named after the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova who toured Australia and New Zealand in the 1920’s. From there, however, things get murky. Apparently a dish called the ‘pavlova’ first appeared in a cookbook* from New Zealand in 1927, however the recipe was for something made from jello.
Aussies, however, claim that the first recipe for the true and proper pavlova that we know and love today was developed by a Perth chef named Bert Sachse sometime around 1935. The disagreement lives on to this day.
But Christmas is no place for such things, and we were just happy to have a piece of pav after dinner and to have been welcomed into the Albany community lunch, which is exactly the point of the whole thing: bring people together and make sure that people aren’t hungry, alone or lonely on Christmas. For us and 300 others, it was a success.
*The cookbook was the wonderfully named Davis Dainty Dishes.
Later that night, after the glow of good tidings and gifts and sugar had worn off, some sort of reality must have set in, for Oscar at least.
Katie found Oscar in the dark crying in the car. He wants to go home, he said. I think we all do. I felt really bad for him at that moment. It’s not often he cracks like that.
We’re not immune to showing our feelings around our family, but usually it’s affection. This was something different. Our kids are tough, or put on as such anyways, and we don’t often see them like this, like kids with big worries and fears and sadness and feelings.
I wanted to shout that there is no crying on Christmas! But I could feel Oscar’s sadness and felt terribly for him. In that moment, I also felt bad for dragging the boys around Australia for three months, away from their friends and the stability of home.
Instead of joining him in the back seat, though, I steeled myself with the thought that we’d be leaving the Emu Caravan Park, with all its tinsel, unwanted relatives, and constant Christmas music, and heading east again the next day. And the fact that in a week we’d be back in Melbourne. Back home.
There was just the small matter of 3,326 kilometres to drive before we got there.