White (hot) Christmas

100_0665
Originally uploaded by BLP.

After a week of R&R in South Australia, we returned to Melbourne on Sunday, well-fed, rested, and a shade or two darker.

We spent a rather chilly (relatively speaking, of course) Christmas in Adelaide, lodging in the newly acquired palace of the Morrows and occupying what will be the nursery as soon as their as-yet-gender-unknown (but future professional athlete) offspring enters the world. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we feasted repeatedly with the greater Morrow and Morton families, respectively.

Post Christmas, we all participated in some Adelaide sightseeing. We peered down on Adelaide from Mount Lofty; fed the roos and missed the feeding of the Tasmanian Devil at Cleland Wildlife Park; and ventured to a beach outside Adelaide which I don't remember the name of, so I'll just call it "The Beach of Misfortune" due to the lousy weather and the loss of one of our comrades' wedding bands in the surf.

Uta and I then drove off in a generously donated vehicle to the wilds of the Fleurieu Peninsula (which to be honest, I'm still not sure how to pronounce) south of Adelaide. The chilly Christmas was rather quickly forgotten as temps in South Australia topped 40C (for those of you only familiar with Fahrenheit, that's about a million degrees), undoubtedly making this the warmest Christmas I've ever experienced. We spent four days traversing the towns of Victor Harbor, Middleton, Port Elliot, and Goolwa and getting Uta used to driving on the wrong side of the road. We occupied ourselves during much of the daylight hours lounging on Goolwa Beach, which Uta preferred due to it's apparent similarity to the North Sea beaches of Germany, and we sampled much of the local cuisine, all of which was labelled "gourmet" and "award winning" (coastal South Australia appears to be big on awards). Our most memorable meal was at the newly opened "Stranded" in Port Elliott - still suffering through opening hiccups, but the food was well worth it. Our most memorable non-meal was not obtained at what I'm now unaffectionately calling "The Catch-22 Cafe" in Victor Harbor, where we were repeatedly informed (by the proprieter who, to keep the conceit going, we'll call a major major major major asshole) that we could only order items on the menu, yet none of the items on the menu were available. We ended up grabbing bratwurst from "Klause's German Sausages" (Wir haben gehoert dass Klaus aus Kiel kommt, aber er war nicht da, so wir haben ihn nicht getroffen - schade).

To ring in the New Year, we had a picnic on the beach in Victor Habor, which was disturbed temporarily by the police telling us that alcohol was not permitted (which was a surprise to us given the large display of unmitigated drunkenness among Victor Harbor's youth, who were incidentally quite friendly and eager to chat with foreigners). The police were good sports though, and said, "we're going to wander off over here for a couple of hours - if we come back and you're still drinking we'll have to fine you." Needless to say, all alcohol was safely deposited in our blood streams before that deadline was reached. Nevertheless, the picnic was ultimately disturbed permanently by the rising tide.

We stuck around for the fireworks display, which was quite respectable for a town of just 12,000 people. We then retired to our hotel, where Uta slept while I laid awake listening to scores of those friendly drunken youths who decided to turn our hotel into party central. They gave it a good try, but I think they all ran out of steam before dawn.

And so ended another year. . .

Click on the Lindt (or here) for photos of all the action.