Skip to main content

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.


Christmas in Australia means many things - backyard cricket, prawn salads, a quick game of "throw the dart at Grandma" - but most of all, Christmas means parsurfing. As you can see by this picture of two parasurfers on Christmas day here on Bellerive beach here (on Hobart's Eastern Shore, with Mount Wellington in the background), parasurfing is to Christmas what rabbits are to Easter!

Ever since the First Fleet arrived in this great southern land oh so many years ago, the fusion of sail and surf has been a Christmas tradition. Convicts - bored with digging holes and breaking larger stones into smaller stones - utilised their Christmas break by taking to the skies like a seagull in heat.

From 1788 onwards, convicts could be seen every summer parasurfing up and down the coast, fanny packs [snigger snigger] filled to the brim with prawns, morton bay bugs, seal pups and penguins. Taking advantage of the speed and dexterity that is granted by the wind, these wily criminals supplemented their daily dose of gruel and maggot-water with all of the bounty that can be found in the Tasmanian seas.

From the the tradition has continued down through the generations, so that every Christmas day you can see mothers and fathers strapping in their babies and letting them fly off with the breeze. The kids just love it!
Labels:

Comments

Penyamun Riau said…
I hope you enjoy your christmas friend.
26 December 2008 at 13:35
Tash said…
Nice shot (with the new camera, I presume) - love the text too.
Looks like the whole family had a really grand Christmas. So I just wanted to extend a Merry Christmas wish to you all.
26 December 2008 at 18:58
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...
5 comments
Read more

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...
38 comments
Read more

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.
36 comments
Read more