I always say, “we always do something fun on Christmas day,” and then I looked back through our database to see what exactly we did on “this day in history” since arriving in Australia in 2012. Here is the chronological list:
2012: My first normal/average Christmas in three decades spent at my brothers house on the Georges River. Although it wasn’t completely normal because I paddled there from Woronora in a sea kayak and Doug paddled home. We had my Mum with us and only two kayaks so one person drew the short straw and had to drive! I’m pretty sure Doug and I went swimming in the Georges River which is fun when the tide is running fast because you could jump off my brothers jetty and swim comfortably staying in place as the current ran by. We left Sydney on Boxing Day for our first big Australian road trip.
2013: We were house sitting in Cairns over the sweat season and camped up at Davies Creek with some Cairns friends. We rock-hopped along Davies Creek and went swimming.
2014: Our worst Christmas. We were living in our caravan and were beginning the tradition of house-sitting somewhere over the Christmas holidays. The Christmas holidays are mad in Australia and the best thing to do is travel nowhere. We had a house sit organised in Wonthaggi but it fell apart on Christmas Day and Doug and I left Wonthaggi to drive to Sydney and spent Christmas night in our caravan in a free campsite somewhere in blasting heat. A bit grim.
2015: We were house-sitting in Wodonga and went down to the Murray River to swim. It was hot, but the house-sit was quite good as it was within walking distance of Macdonald Hill and some nice reserves where you could walk all over the hills.
2016: We walked the Bingie Bingie Track from Bingie Bingie Point to Coila Lake and went swimming. It was hot and we were house-sitting in Moruya.
2017: I ran all around Mount Alexandra in the southern highlands from the house-sit we had near the top of Mount Gibraltar.
2018: Mike, Doug and I paddled from Bermagui to Hidden Valley for a lovely couple of days. It can be hard to land at Hidden Valley but we had excellent conditions.
2019: Doug and I paddled to Nelligen from our house to have Christmas lunch with Rose and Mike at Mike’s place on the Clyde River. It was a long paddle and I was suitably tired at the end of the day. We missed the tide in both directions.
2020: Doug and I paddled north from our home bay to a secret little cove on the Murramarang Coast for a lovely night of camping. Fifty four kilometres in two days which seemed like a lot in the days before I started training for Bass Strait and paddled 54 kilometres in one day.
2021: We had a rest day! We were in the midst of training for Bass Strait and we had spent Christmas eve out in the bush doing trail work in the blistering heat.
2022: Another two day trip paddling north from our home bay to a different little cove on the Murramarang Coast.
2023: We were in the middle of training for south west Tasmania and were paddling a lot. As a change of pace we did a lovely low tide walk around the rock platforms from our home bay.
2024: Surfing on the Batemans Bay bar. This can be good when there is a big swell which gets all the way into the Bay. Yesterday was such a day. I was practising leaning and ruddering at the same time which for me is a bit like walking and chewing gum. We paddled back into a headwind, current and big standing waves going out the channel. Interesting conditions which made the day quite fun.
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