email: Patrick Barkham@Sydney
"Take us to Bondi sea-front please," my friend, an exiled Brit, tells the taxi driver. "Sea-front! That's an ocean-front mate," scoffs the driver. A group of us have succumbed to the seasonal calling of Bondi Beach, the place of pilgrimage for homesick Europeans struggling to come to terms with a Christmas that isn't cold and dark.
The double-whammy of Christmas and summer holiday would leave Sydney a ghost town were it not for the presence of thousands of "sweaty poms", the British expats and tourists who refuse to scuttle along the shady side of the street and insist on wearing Santa bobble hats everywhere.
European Australians have had 213 years to adapt their Christmas traditions to the heat, but more recent arrivals from Britain play out a strange parody of Christmas. I roast a traditional lunch, but the oven overheats the house and the steaming hot meal has to be eaten outside in 35 degrees. (My Australian friends wisely cook their turkey and pork on Christmas Eve, eating it cold for Christmas lunch.)
Most of Sydney's Brits confront the weirdness of a hot Christmas head-on at Bondi, probably the biggest British suburb in the southern hemisphere. Nursing a bellyful of roast washed down with imported cans of Boddingtons, many take to the surf in a Santa suit, an event usually recorded by a couple of weary paparazzi who aren't stalking Nicole Kidman on one of Sydney's more upmarket beaches.
The Hotel Bondi, a giant promenade pub, is filled with well-fed former public school pupils travelling for a year before university. Arsenal v Liverpool is on the TV in the corner and a camera crew wades through the crowd. Sunburnt girls' red felt antlers wiggle excitedly. Small scrums of Father Christmases break into tuneless renditions of Jingle Bells. It is all good material for Australia Uncovered, the latest docusoap from the Ibiza Uncovered stable.
Last year, the festivities at Bondi descended into familiar scenes of rowdy drunkenness. Sydney appeared to have lost its love for - or at least its tolerance of - uncivilised hordes from the mother country. One tabloid columnist so strongly criticised rubbish-throwing "filthy poms" that the paper apologised to "readers of British descent" for this "vilification" of the old colonial masters.
This year celebrations are more subdued. Down on the beach four inebriated Welsh backpackers are taking photos of each other in the surf. An open-top Suzuki jeep festooned with multicoloured lights is being piloted along the prom by four Santa Clauses.
Christmas Day feels apocalyptic. The air is unusually hot, dry and thick and great fronts of smoke slowly materialise above Sydney's beaches from the south and the north. The sky grows yellow and the sun becomes a hazy red disc.
Gradually news filters through that the bush fires have closed almost all the roads and railways out of the city. An eerie twilight settles on beachlife by mid-afternoon. Instead of sunshine and the smell of barbies, the Brits get a whiff of burning forests and houses, as ash and blackened gum leaves rain down on them.
By evening, the tourists have retired to their hostels and holiday homes, quietly bemoaning the lack of an EastEnders omnibus or the bumper TV treats of a British Christmas. This year congested telephone lines keep every exile up until 1am, redialling for hours to get through to Britain, in a desperate attempt to wish friends and families back home a happy Christmas and gloat about that swim on the beach.
The double-whammy of Christmas and summer holiday would leave Sydney a ghost town were it not for the presence of thousands of "sweaty poms", the British expats and tourists who refuse to scuttle along the shady side of the street and insist on wearing Santa bobble hats everywhere.
European Australians have had 213 years to adapt their Christmas traditions to the heat, but more recent arrivals from Britain play out a strange parody of Christmas. I roast a traditional lunch, but the oven overheats the house and the steaming hot meal has to be eaten outside in 35 degrees. (My Australian friends wisely cook their turkey and pork on Christmas Eve, eating it cold for Christmas lunch.)
Most of Sydney's Brits confront the weirdness of a hot Christmas head-on at Bondi, probably the biggest British suburb in the southern hemisphere. Nursing a bellyful of roast washed down with imported cans of Boddingtons, many take to the surf in a Santa suit, an event usually recorded by a couple of weary paparazzi who aren't stalking Nicole Kidman on one of Sydney's more upmarket beaches.
The Hotel Bondi, a giant promenade pub, is filled with well-fed former public school pupils travelling for a year before university. Arsenal v Liverpool is on the TV in the corner and a camera crew wades through the crowd. Sunburnt girls' red felt antlers wiggle excitedly. Small scrums of Father Christmases break into tuneless renditions of Jingle Bells. It is all good material for Australia Uncovered, the latest docusoap from the Ibiza Uncovered stable.
Last year, the festivities at Bondi descended into familiar scenes of rowdy drunkenness. Sydney appeared to have lost its love for - or at least its tolerance of - uncivilised hordes from the mother country. One tabloid columnist so strongly criticised rubbish-throwing "filthy poms" that the paper apologised to "readers of British descent" for this "vilification" of the old colonial masters.
This year celebrations are more subdued. Down on the beach four inebriated Welsh backpackers are taking photos of each other in the surf. An open-top Suzuki jeep festooned with multicoloured lights is being piloted along the prom by four Santa Clauses.
Christmas Day feels apocalyptic. The air is unusually hot, dry and thick and great fronts of smoke slowly materialise above Sydney's beaches from the south and the north. The sky grows yellow and the sun becomes a hazy red disc.
Gradually news filters through that the bush fires have closed almost all the roads and railways out of the city. An eerie twilight settles on beachlife by mid-afternoon. Instead of sunshine and the smell of barbies, the Brits get a whiff of burning forests and houses, as ash and blackened gum leaves rain down on them.
By evening, the tourists have retired to their hostels and holiday homes, quietly bemoaning the lack of an EastEnders omnibus or the bumper TV treats of a British Christmas. This year congested telephone lines keep every exile up until 1am, redialling for hours to get through to Britain, in a desperate attempt to wish friends and families back home a happy Christmas and gloat about that swim on the beach.
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