Our holiday was over and we arrived home the day before Christmas Eve full of resolve to make it a tradition to have a pre-Christmas vacation with Zoe in a different part of Australia every year. 
It was a very different Christmas to last year when we had completed the purchase of our rental house on Christmas Eve and moved into the front garden in the caravan. This year we are in our own house and we have got to know plenty of people so we had a jolly evening at the club the night before and woke up feeling very much at home.
I had decided to do turkey and all the trimmings this year - well, I won't be doing that again! It was not even a particularly sweltering day but it was way too hot for cooking (or eating) a roast dinner, I will be quite happy throwing a couple of prawns on the barbie next time and I realised it would not feel strange like last year as we have now settled in.
A couple of days later we decided to go and have a drive round to look at the lights on the local houses. At our end of the Tilligerry Peninsula there are three small townships, Tanilba Bay, Mallabula then us at Lemon Tree Passage at the very tip. The local paper run a competition for the best lights in each town and there in a prize for the overall winner too. Ian had heard about a couple of houses worth a look in Tanilba Bay so off we went. 
The first was incredible but the second was just astonishing. The two women who own the house had moved here from Perth last year and chosen a house to specifically suit their Christmas light extravaganza, they collect for charity and certainly give value for money. The house was relatively tame from the outside but signs and lights guided visitors through Santa's workshop which took up the whole of the garage into the back garden where there was a glass fronted shed housing the reindeer stables. As if this wasn't enough, we were then led up steps to a window where we looked in to see the whole front room was turned over to a Christmas model village. It goes without saying they won the overall prize, I'm a bit worried Ian was taking notes and maybe planning to raise his game next year.
We have had funny weather so far in 2016, a few days very hot followed by a couple of torrential rain then back to extreme heat again. Our little resident koala Ella looked very sorry for herself after one storm but has dried out now. Unfortunately the koala rescue people are concerned she is not growing as she should which is probably because she does not move about from tree to tree. Koalas are supposed to have around 200 trees that they visit because they can only digest new leaves and need to eat the equivalent of about two carrier bags per day so, although it is nice for us to have a koala always present to show visitors, it is not very good for her. The koala society are waiting for her to come further down the tree when they will catch her and feed her up a bit although it is hard to imagine they can release her again if she doesn't know what to do, we fear she may be destined for life in the zoo.