Christmas we spent in Melbourne this year. We visited friends on Christmas Eve and then hosted my family for Christmas lunch. It was the closest thing to a white Christmas that I have seen here, with warm weather until lunch and then heavy hailstorms in the afternoon. Fortunately our car was in the garage.



The following day we left for a week on the beach at Byron Bay. I had not visited there since a trip after final exams in medical school in 1993, and the town had grown and changed quite a lot. It was very crowded, but we were fortunate to be staying close to the town centre and we had a proper kitchen so we did not need to eat out for every meal.



The weather was better than we had expected, with only one day of rain. Since then, the area has been subject to heavy rains and flooding, but we had six days going to he beach or the pool. We were joined by quite a lot of friends from Melbourne, particularly Tats and Chris who were also staying in the town and with whom we spent time both at the beach and sampling the restaurants of Byron Bay.

Most of the others we knew from Melbourne came up shortly before New Years Eve. Georgia and many of her friends were staying at a big house outside the town and others were in Lismore for the film festival and party there over New Years. We went to the opening night of the film festival and enjoyed roughly half the short films screened. The open bar beforehand certainly contributed to people's enjoyment of the event.



The party on New Years Eve was much bigger than I expected in a town of the size of Lismore. With three dance areas and a cabaret and art show and chill out spaces, it was a very well-organized event. We stayed the night nearby and went the following day to the pool party at the Lismore public pool which was the best fun of the weekend. There is a gallery of photos from the party in which we appear since we arrived quite early after having to check out at 10am.



Shortly after we returned to Melbourne, we had a friend from New York come to stay for a week. We had met Chad in the Caribbean and he came to stay while on an extended vacation. Arriving from New Zealand, he managed to bring wet weather with him and so was not impressed with our "Summer". We showed him some of the cultural highlights of Melbourne: the 20/20 cricket, some of the better shopping in the city and Prahran (though to an American our prices seem very expensive), and a few of the bars. He will see Sydney's highlights when he visits there for Mardi Gras in March.



Chad left the day before the Midsumma Carnival at which we volunteered again this year and which coincided with the return of the good weather. The Carnival organizers had learned from some of the minor problems last year and this year's was one of the best we have been to. It was a long day as our volunteer shifts started from 7am. By the time we were at the T-dance 12 hours later, we were ready for bed. We saw a lot of friends at Carnival, including Jim who was visiting from Sydney.

We went to the Australian Open tennis on the Friday of the first week, seeing the centre court match between Tomic and Dolgopolov. It was a long match, but certainly not the best we have seen at the open. Once Chad had left town of course there was only one occasion in the two weeks of the open when the roof was closed because of rain.



The end of January is also the end of the contract year for all the anaesthesia trainees. Jay came with me to the dinner to farewell them, and voted it the best one he had been to, largely for the food and drink and company and because he didn't mind that we couldn't hear the speeches as he didn't know who they were about anyway.

In the little Summer that remains we plan to squeeze in a trip to the beach at Sorrento and then in the first week of March we will travel to Sydney on Mardi Gras weekend to see all the friends, local and foreign, who will be visiting there.

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