Australians are a weird mob.....

Hot December Morning

I took this photo of a fiery orange sun at 5:44am this morning which gives an indication of the blistering hot day ahead. It's going to be about 40 degrees centigrade which is ummmmmm bloody hot in Farenheit.

It is now where I live.

Bushfire alerts are out in NSW and already I've seen some hot gully winds shreiking their way through the valley, blowing leaves and bark from the trees. Hot weather plus hot strong winds points to high bushfire alert mode around here. If there's a fire in strong wind, burning leaves are blown kilomters starting new fires.

Eucalypts IMHO were intelligently designed both to propogate in and propogate fires. Their leaves are like little helicopters and the oil in them is highly flammable, even the bark drops off and causes fire fuel at the base of the trees. There's thousands of them around here, just waiting to go off.

My "must take this" list is being prepared in case there is a fire, the bush can be beautiful at times and can turn nasty pretty quickly. Evidence of old bushfires here can bee still seen on some old gum trees in the valley below.... so one is in a state of wary preparedness.

Now to Christmas.

The weather guys say it's going to be another scorching Christmas. And yet the Christmas songs in the shops downunder sing of snow, reindeers and sleigh rides. Such is the European and Northern Hemisphere cultural propagandal influence. Even the Greek Fish and Chip shop owners were sweating yesterday in the heat at 7 pm, their front windows frosted over with fake snow in some sort of strange homage to wintery Christmases up north. Bizarro. I expect those in Miami and Arizona in the USA deal with the same sort of strange phenomena.

At one time, sitting down to a roast dinner and boiled pudding still had its allure, red faced housewives perspiring in hot kitchens. Bringing out a heavy, hot meal to Dad and the kids dressed in Hawaiin shirts and surfing shorts. At least a cold beer went down well! Some people still do the traditional fare, I used to cook a big turkey in my Weber barbeque, starting at 7am and smoking it until it pretty well fell apart at around 1pm.

In these more modern times there has been a shift downunder from traditional stodgy English fare to a more lighter choice of cold meat, seafood and salads. It's a great way to spend Christmas, in your swimming togs, munching on a prawn(shrimp) with a beer in the other hand, on the beach with the radio blaring songs about "White Christmas" which take on a whole new meaning with our sandy white beaches. ........and yet another meaning given the recent race riots in Cronulla!

I'll be enjoying some cold ham and turkey and salads with friends around here.

I hope everyone who passes by here has an enjoyable one.