Boxing Day - Aussie Style

Thursday 27th December 2007
at 03:21pm

The 26th of December to us, and most people from the Commonwealth (countries founded by the British) represents Boxing Day. A holiday that isn’t celebrated here.

Boxing Day, dating back to between the 5th and 15th centuries was traditionally the day that employers offered gifts to their servants and those in the “lower class” as a benefit for having worked for them the day before. As a bonus for serving their master and his family on the actual date of the religious holiday that was (is) Christmas Day, they were given the following day off to spend with their families.

Traditions stated that anything that was left over from the Christmas parties where servants had worked would be “boxed up” and sent away with them to enjoy with their kin on “Boxing Day”.

In times of the 17th century and beyond, said servants would receive a box full of practical goods such as cloth, grains or tools from their Masters. This was a mandatory gift that Lords of the manor, though usually happy to provide, were forced to if their intentions were otherwise.

In Australia, Boxing Day most recently represented the biggest single day of shopping in history. The “Boxing Day Sales” were the sorts of sales that saw 1000’s of people lining up for massive discounts on retail goods all over the country. These days the stores are not allowed to open on the 26th and all sales are deferred to the 27th. Personally, I remember watching the news at 5 on Boxing Day thinking how crazy all of these people were. I mean, they get up so early in the morning just to push and squeeze and fight with people to save a little bit of money on things they probably didn’t need in the first place anyway.

The two biggest Boxing Day traditions are the “Boxing Day (cricket) Test” played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground as pictured here and the start of “The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race” out of Sydney Harbour as pictured at the top of this post. Fans of both sports worldwide tune into both as two of the biggest dates on the Australian sporting calendar.

For a number of years Kelly, her family and I used Boxing Day to head down to Culburra Beach, about 3 hours south of Sydney to holiday in their caravan for the week between Christmas and New Year. Staying in caravan parks for the holiday season is a massive Australian tradition that sees swimming, surfing, street cricket and BBQ’s aplenty.

I don’t have pictures handy of us actually being down there but I have downloaded a few to give you an idea:

Our caravan was in the second row, bottom left of the cluster right in the middle of the pic. Just to the NE, where the small parcel of sand is, is a boat ramp for lowering into the bay and a jetty for the casual fisherman. We used that jetty every time we went. South of the park is the ocean. You can see 2 very small sandy walkways barely dividing the trees. If we walked those tracks once we must have walked them 100 times to get down to the water. At the very bottom right you can see a whole lot of rocks. Great for rock pools, shallow bathing and fishing if you so dare. We’d snorkel east of the rocks every time we could muster the energy to walk that far.

The NE boat ramp

The NE jetty at dusk. This’d be around 830 or so in the evening.

One of two sandy tracks that takes you from the park to the beach

View from the end of the track

Not famous as a surfing beach Culburra can still throw out some decent waves when it wants to

A typical Culburra beach house by the water

Famous all over the south coast is “Backgate Seafoods” at Greenwell Point not far from the van. You haven’t had fresh seafood until you’ve had it here.

If you’re interested in anymore info on the southern beaches you can find it at some of these sites:

http://www.gidgetgoestoculburra.com.au/

http://www.southcoast.com.au/culburra/index.html

http://www.holidayhaven.com.au/

http://www.fortytowels.com.au/page.asp?id=29

Otherwise, that’s the tour finished with. I’ll tell you all about our Boxing Day experience in Green Bay in a fresh post.

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