TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

AUSTRALIA 2 - PART THREE

I've gone a bit out of sequence here because we had arrived in Western Australia at Easter 2004 and I have now jumped to Christmas 2004. However, to anyone who is reading these as soon as they are posted it will seem very appropriate as it is now just after Christmas 2016. Have 12 years really passed? Oh well, here we go.

Christmas 2004. Our eight months in Australia had been amazing. We had talked to school authorities, teachers, businessmen, designed and uploaded our own site, been asked to report on the Freo Festival and, all in all, nearly everything had gone to plan. The various contacts we had made meant we had secured some sponsorship and we felt ready to set off, in February 2005, for our journey around and through Australia. There had been some weird stuff. Some guy, with a very strange background, had been phoning quite regularly with promises of help, but even without this, we could go. I had some suspicions but couldn’t prove anything, yet.

However, before that start date, we had still more work to do plus we had planned a little trip back to Europe in January, mainly to see family and friends. Our first task was the Fremantle Christmas concert, held in King’s Square. We had agreed to re-write our song for some children from a local school to sing. This school had a high percentage of refuge intake and I re-wrote the song to take this into account. Then another school asked to become involved and I wrote some words to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, he couldn’t hear it anyway, for them. The concert was an open-air affair.

I have been to open-air carol concerts before in England and I was able to pass on my experience of these to the Mayor of Fremantle early in the evening. For me, open-air events are always a bit risky but, after a good look up at the sky, I was able to let him know that I felt, with a certain degree of confidence, that the snow should hold off. For some reason he laughed at me. I must point out that the temperature, even at that late hour, was around 30C, the sky was clear blue, to my knowledge it had never snowed in Freo, but carol concerts can have snow, so I felt it best to be cautious.

The evening featured about six schools from the area performing different songs on a stage set up in the square. The songs ranged from standard Christmas carols to dance routines; singing groups to string sections; duos and solo artists. In the middle, the Mayor made a brief speech and toward the end Santa, no sign of Rudolf by the way, arrived and threw lollies to all the kids. Our songs featured toward the end of the evening and both schools gave fantastic performances. In fact, Ode to Joy, who couldn’t make it either, closed the whole concert. I had written the words to try to get across how, maybe at Christmas, we could show young people how it really all could be, how we could share the spirit of Christmas with everyone, whatever colour, race or religion. The music teacher at the school explained that everyone should listen to the words and I was really grateful for his comments.

Also, the young lady who played the piano for the Beaconsfield School’s rendition of our song wrote a lovely email to me

Hi, Richard. I’m Su Jin from Beaconsfield Primary School. It was great fun at Fremantle Festival Last night. My parents really enjoyed watching Fremantle Festival and so do I! Thank you for organising the concert for us. I really like the One world song. It’s very interesting and wonderful. I think the song says same as what I ‘m thinking. I want peace. I hope that there’s no war in the world. Anyway thank you for giving us the one world T-shirt and the flowers. I think you are always doing good things for people.
I hope to see you again.
Su Jin Lee – pupil, Beaconsfield Primary School, Western Australia

The evening ended with a walk through Freo down to the Esplanade with everyone singing and carrying torches. We had managed to get some t-shirts printed and these were being worn by the kids from ‘our’ schools. At the Esplanade Park the Mayor switched on the lights of Freo’s Christmas tree and still it hadn’t snowed. However, a beautiful evening came to a finish, the loudspeakers played out carols, kids ran around with glow-torches and then we all went home.

Our own Christmas that year was really special. For the whole of our time in Western Australia we had either stayed in backpackers accommodation or with someone in their houses. Now, one of the teachers with whom we had worked, was off for a week’s break down south and she asked us to house-sit. We put up a Christmas tree and some decorations but it felt so strange wearing shorts and needing the air conditioning on to do this. The previous two years I had spent Christmas in Poland where it was cold, there was snow and it seemed Christmassy even if all the carols were sung in a strange language. Now the temperature was close to 40C, the sky was blue but I could recognise all the carols. Oh, and Santa arrived by helicopter.

Australians, or at least Western Australians, really go to town with their Christmas decorations. The buses were decorated and the photos below are just some of the ones I took of ordinary houses. We found one where they had put up 5,000 lights and another where they had a walk-in Nativity set. They may not have the cold and the snow but the have the Christmas spirit, or at least what constitutes a modern Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, the most important day in a Polish Christmas, my girlfriend invited over a Polish friend she had made. She and her partner came over and my girlfriend decided to make some traditional Polish dishes. We had, so my notes say, traditional borsch (beetroot soup) and pierogi (sort of tortelini pastry filled with mushrooms and cabbage), some other dishes with mushrooms, fish and, for a dessert, kutia. I hope I got all this right. The last one, the dessert, was poppy-seed paste with raisins, sultanas, lemon and orange peel, vanilla essence, nuts, almonds, sugar and honey.

My girlfriend had never claimed to be the world’s greatest cook but she thought she knew how to make this one. The first thing, she said, is to crush the poppy seeds. We didn’t have anything to do this, so I tried everything from putting them between two bricks to folding them inside a tea towel and thumping the living daylights out of them with a rolling-pin. After about an hour of this, she emerged from the lounge, where she had been consulting google, and said we should have boiled them first. It did make it easier I have to admit.

Then on Christmas day we went down to the beach near us at a place called Cottesloe. This was so weird. People had spread out tables, covered in festive tablecloths and were eating their Christmas lunch. Some even seemed to have the so traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings. But, they were all in swimwear. True, they had paper hats, but that didn’t really add too much. I was told it had now become an Australian tradition here. We already knew, because we had experienced it, that some Aussies celebrated another Christmas in July, their mid-winter. What I didn’t know was that my next four Christmases after this would be southern hemisphere ones too.

Six days later I had my first southern hemisphere new year too and, because of the international date line, it was early. This was spent, once again on the beach, at a party with DJ’s, dancing, champagne and hope. But, as you will see later, a hope soon to be shattered.

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