Christmas Confusion, Dingo Drollery

Driving back home the other day in blazing sunshine, with temperatures in the high twenties, we came across a selection of floats, like a small carnival. Standing beside them in the heat were hordes of small children, all sweating in red tunics and hats, and amid them, Santa Claus, in full regalia, including whiskers.

This was the starting point for Santa's parade to the nearby shopping plaza and to anyone used to celebrating - if that's the word - Christmas in conditions of stygian gloom and possibly torrential rain, it was bizarre sight. Since then, the temperature has climbed to the mid-thirties on a couple of days, and Santa is well set up in his air-conditioned grotto, doing what Santas do the world over - patiently, or otherwise, having their photo taken with small children while being observed by a security camera to ensure propriety.

Most of the houses round here are decked out in flashing lights, stars, sleighs and reindeer, all looking bleached under the blazing sun, with the fizzing noise that cheap electrics make being drowned out during our regular tropical downpours by the croaking of hundreds of frogs and the cries of enthusiastic cicadas.

There are no lights on our house but, like most people, we'll be having a barbecue on Christmas Day. Apart from this, I really can't accept that Christmas is coming at all. We seem to have no need of a mid-winter feast but no doubt we'll manage to force down a few fresh prawns and, because I thought everyone was joking when they said Christmas was coming, I'm committed to making a pudding.

In the midst of all this tradition and sentimentality, you'll be glad to hear that the Australian sense of humour remains as robust as ever. You'll remember the case of Lindy Chamberlain, whose baby daughter was apparently taken by dingos from a campsite at Uluru? Well, she still regularly makes the headlines here, and did so last week, because what exactly happened has never been fully established and speculation continues.

Outside almost every bookshop is a display of Larson desk calenders. The cover cartoon shows a nursery and in the front garden is a playpen full of toddlers. Nextdoor is a dingo farm, with a line of dingos, their noses pressed to the garden fence, looking keenly at the occupants of the playpen.