Celebrating Christmas and crossing the new year in Melbourne

For the first time in many many years, I am spending both Xmas and New Year overseas. The main reason why this was not possible the past 8 years was due to my job as a teacher, since school usually starts on 2 Jan right after New Year Day and protected time for most schools actually ends about a week before Xmas. So I was quite stoked to be spending both Xmas and New Year overseas.  Work had picked right up as we enter mid-end season and I was working almost everyday. The good news was that they have assured us that we will not be working no Xmas and Boxing day as well as New Year Day.

On Xmas eve, I had decided not to go in to work since they were only gonna clock in about 4h that day. It didn't make sense time-wise and financially. We decided to drive 3.5h up north to a place called Cactus Country. To be clear, this is not high up on my list of places to see when in Melbourne our reasoning was that we should probably do more/ go to more places that ordinary tourists don't go to since we are essentially long-term tourists. And because it was a 3.5h drive (and therefore 7h return) we decided to set off early-ish so that we can hit Shepparton for lunch and get there early afternoon. It had been a while since we took a long road-trip so frankly, the drive was really quite therapeutic to me. Arriving at the place, to my surprise, we were actually not the only ones there. There were 3 other groups of people - all of them foreign tourists. Which actually was a surprise, because who's heard of this place?! (by the way, the girlfriend 'discovered' the place on Tiktok - as with many of her 'discoveries') Let alone foreigners. Cactus Country is a passion project by some dude who was interested in the plant and decided to 'found' a place in the middle of nowhere (relatively) to grow his passion. It then became what it is today with many different meandering routes around a large compound of different types of cacti. As usual, here are some pictures of it that you can't get off Google Images.

The weather was quite ridiculous since a heat wave was hitting just on Xmas day and so we spent an hour or so strolling around before retreating back to their cafe to have a nice little dessert of cactus cake, ice cream and cider.

Was the place worth the time/ fuel/ money spent? No. I mean, if you were along the way, perhaps doing a longer roadtrip between Melbourne and Sydney taking the inland road, it is a nice stop over point but it was definitely not worth a day trip from Melbourne unless you have a lot of time on your hands and paying for fuel is not something you do.

We arrived back in Melbourne at around 8pm which meant we could grab a quick dinner (at a Ramen place, since most shops and restaurants are closed at that time for Xmas - think of it like CNY in SG). With the sun slowly setting at around 9pm, we wanted to head to Federation Squre to soak in the Xmas spirit. While it is mid summer here in Australia this time of the year, the temperature at night still drops to below 20 deg usually which makes for a nice stroll in and around the CBD area where most of the festivities are held. Again, here are some pics that you probably cannot find off Google images.

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New Year's Eve.

I had gone online to find out about the fireworks situation in Melbourne. Australia and NZ are one of the first in the world to celebrate New Year. Information gathered from my Taiwanese colleagues also suggested that the fireworks this year was going to be quite something, since due to COVID, the celebrations over the past 2 years had been quite muted. (Some of them actually flew to Sydney to catch the fireworks at the Harbour Bridge!) And so with high expectations, we decided to invite my uncle and his family over to St Kilda for a BBQ and to watch the fireworks at the same time.

The interesting thing about the fireworks here is that there are actually 2 sets - one at 9.30pm another at 12mn. The 9.30pm fireworks are meant for families with kids who can't stay up too late and the one at 12mn is the one for the actual countdown. And so at 9.30pm we had lined our beach chairs in the direction of the CBD, hoping to see a massive fireworks display.

On hindsight, looking how many people there were on the beach then, we should have known. It was not that we did not see any fireworks frankly the sounds of the fireworks provided us with more excitment than the visual feast that greeted us. The anticipation and then the letdown at 9.30pm was disappointingly hilarious.

With my uncle and his family heading home at around 10 plus, we also went back to our place to rest intending to head out again just before midnight to hopefully get a much better visual experience at midnight. Here's the fireworks display from the beach - still quite disappointing but it was still nice to stand at the beach with many others counting down to the New Year - and experience that will be hard to forget despite the disappointing fireworks.