Christmas Time in Australia

Another Christmas has come and gone - but for us it didn't feel particularly Christmas-y this year. There was no snow, no bitter cold windchill, no slippery roads...Simply put, it just wasn't a Canadian Christmas. It was, however, a very traditional Aussie Christmas!  Keep reading to hear about how we went full-on Aussie with the rental of a cottage at a beach for the week.

The cottage we rented was located in the Hyams beach area of Jervis Bay. We really lucked out with our cottage as we were within 25m walking distance to a small, private beach called Chinaman's beach.

Chinaman's Beach

Chinamans Beach - Do you see Blair swimming out there?

We lucked out by having access to this smaller, more private beach as most of the crowds tended to be at Hyams Beach, an absolutely massive beach that runs along a large part of Jervis bay. Most of the crowds head to Hyams Beach (as opposed to the smaller Chinamans Beach) as it is home to the whitest sand in the world (according to the Guinness Book of Records).

Hyams Beach - lots of people!

While the weather wasn't perfect each and every day (Xmas day was a 'chilly' 21 degrees due to a cyclone out at sea), we had many days in the low 30s, so we were able to make the most of our visit to the coast.

Some of the locals showed up on Christmas Eve to build a not-so-traditional 'Sandman' -- or 'Sandwoman' we guess :).

'Sandwoman'

The cottage itself was very spacious and very relaxing! It had a full-sized kitchen, a huge living room, two bedrooms, and great upper balcony with a view of the water!

Our cottage for the week!

Lots of room!

Great kitchen

2 big bedrooms

Upper balcony with a view of the water!

All in all, it was a great Christmas week. Hopefully we can do it again next year when our family visits!

Christmas is coming?!?

Christmas is coming!  Christmas is coming?!?

Let us just come out and say it - It doesn't feel like Christmas to us.  At all.  The days are hot and the daylight hours are long. How can it possibly be Christmas time?

It's certainly not like we've never experienced warm and snow-less Christmases before. We've been fortunate enough to spend a Christmas in Florida, and we certainly had our fair share of green Christmases in Maryland.  But this year...it's different. We think it's due to a combination of things:

• Our Christmas in Florida was a getaway for a week. It was a temporary escape from the cold Canadian Christmas. In Oz, however, the days have been getting hotter and hotter since the beginning of October. We often find ourselves thinking that's it's July since it feels like the beginning of summer (as it should, we suppose, since it is indeed summer here). But no, it's not July - it's December and it's only 2 weeks until Christmas.
• The days are bright and long! Christmas, in our mind, is a dark but cozy time: The days are short, which allows you to enjoy colorful Christmas lights everywhere. This is definitely not the case here - it's still bright out at 9 pm, so we're missing all the Christmas light festivities.

Despite the fact that we're not feeling Christmas-y, we're still looking forward to the holidays. We've been told that a typical Aussie Christmas consists of having a BBQ while opening presents in your backyard (can you imagine?!), which is followed up by a game of cricket before everyone hops in the car to head to the beach.

Given that we're not huge fans of cricket (i.e. the most boring sport to ever exist), we've crossed that item off our list of Christmas must-do's (for this year, anyway!).  So how are the Foster's spending Christmas? Well, we've rented a cottage on the beach (Jervis Bay - Chinaman's/Hyams's Beach - which apparently holds the Guiness Book of World Records for the whitest sand in the world). We've been told that the cottage has a nice BBQ and backyard, so voila - all other Aussie traditions will be met!

Check out our cottage rental by clicking here: (Seahaven Cottage)

Chinaman's Beach - Our cottage is located by the grassy area at the left of the photo!

Feeling hot-hot-hot!

What can we say? We were warned that Canberra would get hot in the summer, and boy were they right!  The temperature has been in the 30's for several weeks now, and has only dropped into the high 20's a few times. The heat is dry though, so it's actually quite nice. In other words - we love it!  But we're also quite thankful for our air con! ;)

It's hard to believe that we've been here for 8.5 months already.  We really need the time to slow down! We spent the first third of our time in Australia getting settled, the second third of our time traveling outside of the country, and are now spending the most recent bit of time exploring things locally - as you may have seen on recent blog posts.

This past weekend, we visited the Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets. Why we haven't visited this place before, we have no idea!  We guess maybe we were comparing it to a few other markets we have visited in Canberra (the EPIC Market and the Old Bus Depot Market). Don't get us wrong - both of these markets were quite nice. The former being a typical farmer's market and the latter being more of a crafty market.

The Fyshwick market, however, beat the other two markets - hands down! You could easily spend hours there and not see everything. It had the standard farmer's market areas, but it also had a multitude of other specialty stores. We stopped at a butcher only to find real American-style bacon!  (You have no idea how happy we were to see this, as it's not something you can find in the supermarkets here.) Next up was a specialty pet store and a specialty beer store (we swear, there were thousands of different beers in this store that you could try individually). There was also several fish/seafood shops, a winery front, many restaurants, and a specialty store that sold some American treats that you just can't find anywhere else in Canberra.

All around - a great day at the markets!

Entry to the Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets - Christmas Time!!