I was a little apprehensive about spending Christmas here in Kalgoorlie as I was afraid that I wouldn't know anyone and would be so far away from home that it would be just miserable. However, thanks to changing my travel plans and having spent over 6 weeks in town it turned out quite the opposite!

Christmas eve I set about helping the guys with anything I could as they were making dinner for about 20 people tomorrow afternoon. This entailed buying some extra alcohol and making some cocktails. Darren and I set about making some Mojito and Daquiri but it had so much Bacardi in it you probably could have blown up our flat if you'd lit a match! Later on I thought I would make some mince pies using an old recipe. This went very well! Everyone loved them and they even bought me some more ingredients so I could make some more! These however...did not go so well. We ran out of mince meat so stuffed it full of nuts but the lids were too big so they came off during baking. Gretta decided to make some apple pies and covered them in sugar...tasted quite horrible! It was all in good fun though. We were planning on having a Christmas Eve trolley race with all the trolleys we'd collected during the day but everyone was way too drunk for that. Thank heavens as apparently you can get arrested for playing with them in the street!

Christmas day came round and I took it upon myself to make everyone in the flat a nice fruit salad for breakfast. We would only need a small amount of fruit and since our fridge looked like we'd robbed a green grocer we had the fruit to spare! Elaine and I went about setting up the dining room, putting out enough seats and tables together for everyone to come and sit down to a family dinner together. One table would have food on it and the other would have people sat round. I had been called Martha Stewart several times over the last couple days because I had the wrapping paper, the cello tape, the name tags, the little sprinkles for the tables, the candles, the perfectionism on how the gifts should be arranged under the tree...the list was endless! Maybe I just wanted everything to be prefect for a bunch of people who were so far away from home and their families. Dinner went very well though, there was enough food to feed a small army, we gave out the cocktails and then I played Santa giving out all the gifts to anyone who participated in our Secret Santa. Everyone seemed to get something sensible except for Hayden. Do ask what and why though lol. After dinner we had a few games of frisbee and pretend drowning (Damian you know what this is) in the swimming pool before settling down to a long afternoon and night of drinking! I do have some very random pictures and memories from today and random video of 4 of us singing TLC's Waterfalls song...I don't know so don't ask why lol.

Boxing day arrived and several of us had already decided that we would go down to Esperance for the day. It was going to be me, Geoff, Darren and Kai. The day started off late because several people just couldn't make it out of bed on time and I also got held up at the petrol station. It was the first time I had put fuel in my car and I looked like a helpless drunken idiot at those pumps for a while! We eventually set off and for those of you who don't know WA geography...Esperance is a good 4 hour drive from Kalgoorlie down the most boring road in the world! I thought the drive to Menzies was boring till I did this one! Everyone fell asleep pretty much straight away apart from Kai who was sat behind me so I couldn't talk to him anyway. We made it to Norseman in a good amount of time and I was a bit mean since I sat there and watched Darren buy a chicken roll which I knew was going to be expensive and taste horrible! (I'd had one on the journey from Esperance to Kalgoorlie when I came up by bus). We arrived in Esperance and the weather was beautiful! Straight to West Beach and into the water, it seemed a little cold at first but once you dived in it was wonderful. The water was warm and was crystal clear for miles around. A helicopter flew overhead and I joked with Darren that it was a shark helicopter when it was a tourist one. He believed me for a few minutes till we started making Jaws music noises behind him in the water lol. We got out and went to investigate some other beaches and ended up sunbathing on the rocks at Twilight beach. I must have fallen asleep as when I woke up, there was no one on the beach, the wind was getting up and the waves were getting bigger...time to leave! All of us decided to get some food before heading home and I realised quite quickly how burnt I had gotten in the sun...it's ok...adds to the base layer lol. The journey home was a little worse. I was so tired I thought I was going to fall asleep at the wheel but perked up in time to realise we might run out of petrol before reaching Norseman...whoops! We made it to Norseman and I agreed with Kai for him to drive us back the rest of the journey to Kalgoorlie. On the way back you could see a lightning storm in the distance but it hadn't reached Kalgoorlie, it was still 36 degrees when we got back! So hot outside still at 8.30pm! That pretty much rounds up Christmas in Kalgoorlie, I can only hope that all travellers have had a good one, New Year next!

The picture is of some of us after dinner on Christmas day.