My crew enjoyed six days of shore leave near Perth over Christmas. The Australian Navy brought a 60 Hz generator 1500 miles from a cruise line port near Adelaide to accommodate us. This way the power plant division didn't have have 24-on/24-off duty sections. We were permitted to offer tours to some folks on the base, and one fellow standing on the pier responded to my question whether he was on the tour with, 'can I be?'. It turns out he was a university professor doing a corrosion-control experiment on some Navy ships at the base.
It was my duty day and, generally, anyone not on watch was recovering from the day before, so I got the job being Mr. PR that afternoon. After the 90-minute nickel tour of the places we could show them, the fellow asked if he could bring his sons back the next day.
At 8 am I was off duty and there he was with a 5 and 7 year old on the pier. They had a ball looking out the periscope and checking out the torpedoes on their personalized tour. At the end, the fellow invited me to join his family for Christmas, two days later.
He picked me up as planned, and we drove an hour and a half north to his home. It occurred to me that he had scraped his boys off their mattresses at 5:30 am to make our 8 am appointment.
We arrived at their house where there were a couple presents under their Christmas tree with my name out them...turned out to be a couple of popular Australian adventure novels.
So weird to have Christmas in the middle of the summer. Santa wears shorts, Down Under.
Later, we joined the extended family get-together for Great-Grandma, who was almost 100. There were about 35 people gathered there when the crowd parted and a hush descended. A skinny guy about 20 walks up and Granny have him a big hug. It turns out that he'd 'gone walkabout' and no one had seen him for the past two years. He'd been finding his path in life while while working in an opal mine in the dessicated town of Coober Petey in the middle of nowhere.
Yep, I'd have to agree, if the people I met were representative, Australians are really great people. Who talk little differently and drive on the wrong side of the road. But very welcoming to this American.
