Easter, Aussie-style

In the UK, Easter Sunday is traditionally a day spent with family, attending church if you’re religious, organising an Easter egg hunt for the kids, sitting round the table feasting on a nice bit of lamb and roasties, sipping red wine, gorging on chocolate and perhaps going for a walk through green fields full of sprightly newborn lambs, then feeling guilty that you’ve just eaten a particularly delicious one. Easter Sunday in Australia is not so different – those so inclined trot off to church, children hunt around the garden for little chocolate eggs, families get together and stuff themselves with food, the adults have a few to drink, and then everyone leaves the table for a bit of exercise. The difference is, the meal is often a BBQ, the weather’s usually warm and sunny encouraging al fresco dining, and the exercise is some sort of energetic team game. And that is exactly how we spent our first Easter Down Under.

The heathens that we are, we favoured a lie-in over church, before driving over with aunt, uncle and three cousins to a gathering that included two further lots of aunts and uncles and eight more cousins. That put us at a grand total of nineteen, plus a dog, which is a lot of mouths to feed. The Aussie favourite, the barbecue, was therefore wheeled out and we feasted on sausages, lamb, corn on the cob and a cacophony of side dishes. This was all washed down with sparkling, rosé and red wines and beers for the boys who wanted to be real Aussie men.

I was roped into playing something called corbis ball (that might not be quite what it was called but I’m still finding the accent hard to decipher upon occasion), which is like dodgeball but without the teams – it’s every man for himself out there. As I was wearing my new 7 For All Mankind jeans I wasn’t about to kneel on the grass and risk grass stains so a towel was kindly provided for me by one of the (sniggering) aunts – apparently that’s not a very Aussie thing to do. I retired after a couple of games to sit in the sunshine and drink wine (in my opinion, an eminently more sensible thing to do) whilst watching the strenuous activity from a safe distance. The Husband kept our end up by playing till the end and scored a few points with the men of the family in doing so.

We went home several hours later tired but happy. The following day we would be leaving for Perth, which meant saying goodbye to the family but hello to the start of our new adventure. WA here we come!