Return to Oz

Christmas in Oz is a little weird. Everyone's out on the beach, everyone's swimming, everyone's holding a bbq...meanwhile sweaty looking santas, snowmen and reindeer decorate the windows. So strange, celebrating all that winter wonderland stuff in a place with an average temperature of 30 degrees; heavy looking fir trees thick with candy canes and presents sit amid jacaranda trees and palms. It has the same incongruous feel as the juxtaposition of British place names and aboriginal ones; sometimes you just want to say, 'Give it up, this is the great sea change; you can't be the thing you were in the old country.' Not far under the surface waits the dreaming. We went to caves where a huge ancestor (literally half lizard half fish: Godzilla!) is said to sleep. The cave was known as the place of a dark spirit, and gave one a feeling of being watched throughout. Very beautiful though, is the underworld.

It is hard to walk through the Jenolan caves and not want to go further down, deep into the crystal earth, discover these places unknown, to wander the beautiful Royal National Park and not want to just keep going. Alice Springs, Darwin, Arnhem Land... Why stop? One night I looked up, surprised to see Orion, and even more astonished to see his dagger above his belt. It meant that Betelgeuse and Bellatrix were the hem of his robe, Rigel became his shoulder. I was in the upside-down.

The fabulous nature of the hol never abated, Sydney amazing especially on New Years eve, all family happiness and fireworks over the bay.

There were fruitbats overhead every night ( I have a special liking for them, when I was a kid I had a dream friend who was a wise old fruitbat, concealed in a bush at school, giving me advice) cockatoos and kukkaburras, and a pair of spider encounters that were truly beautiful. One had a slightly dramatic edge to it: in my brother-in-law's house, down between the fridge and the wall, sat a dark spider with elegant long legs and a scarlet stripe down her back. On capture, we ascertained she was a redback, a member of the widow family with a potentially fatal and very painful bite. She couldn't stay in a house with a toddler and a baby, but where to put her was the issue. In the end, we found an overgrown traffic island, unlikely to be anyone's playground, and left her there.

There were too many adventures to recount and now I am back. What a year 2017 was for travel! It made me very happy. This year must be about work; I have to dedicate myself for a while. And then? More travel, more world, more strange constellations, landscapes, stories, beasties, and all sorts of magic. Ready 2018? Here we go...