The Ghost of Christmas Past

Here we are on Christmas Eve eve. In Melbourne it is a cool night after several days of hot weather, so at least we will be able to sleep tonight.

Anyway, all that is beside the point. I scanned the photo above last night. It is from my childhood and reminds me of Christmas in the place we were living at the time because my brother's Christmas present is depicted in the photo.

We were given odd things as presents. One year we were all given pith helmets. Mine was powder blue, my brothers helmets were a sort of khaki colour. We loved them and wore them everywhere.

The year of the photo above, my younger brother was given an American Indian tepee and headdress. The present came from my mother's twin brother Uncle D. That was exotica to us. I think I was given a scarab bracelet from Egypt that year which no doubt mollified the desire I may have felt to have my little brother's present.

The photo was taken obviously by my older brother (he isn't in the picture) and shows my younger brother (in headdress) sitting in front of his tepee, surrounded by kids from the mining community up the road. The place is Woods Point, a small mining town in North East Victoria. We lived at the hospital where our mother was the local medico. The Morning Star mine was still in operation those days and the miners and their families lived in a small housing sector slightly out of the main township which was called White City owing to the houses all being painted white.

The photo setting is the side of the hospital. It looks alarmingly overgrown, tall grass everywhere. I'm the big blonde kid standing on the right next to the tree. I appear to be wearing winter clothes, though the other kids are less heavily clad.

The photo was taken with some old brownie box camera which produced little tiny photos, so the quality leaves a lot to be desired. However it does capture an afternoon of long ago, an afternoon drenched in summer sunshine.

Woods Point has been much in my mind of late because of the bush fires. We had rain last night, the first decent fall for weeks, so the threat has now lessened, but has not completely gone away.

As I am unlikely to post again before Christmas - I wish the readers of this blog a very happy and safe festive season.