Memories of Christmas past and present
As a kid, I always knew when Christmas was coming, due to the Redcliffe City Council raising its Christmas mural atop the council chambers in early December. Like a cross between a drive-in movie screen and a huge sail being unfurled on a clipper ship, as if the council was racing around the Cape of Good Hope on the run home to Australia and Christmas, especially when a wind would gust up from the bay and swirl around the Coles New World carpark in little eddies, picking up bits of paper and rubbish and then tossing them up in the air.
What was startling about the trampoline mural wasn’t its subject matter, the Nativity, but its size. I wasn’t used to big public statements like this in Redcliffe, where public Christmas decorations were as rare as hen’s teeth.
Figures lined the sides of the mural, creating a perspective of depth, to where Joseph, Mary and Christ took centre stage. There were lots of beards, Holy Mary and the baby Jesus excepted of course, and what was of some interest was the bloke with a staff in the foreground. Why you would bring a staff to a birth, I had no idea, but he brought his, so I asked my father why when we were walking past the council chambers on our way to the Redcliffe jetty to fish.
“Maybe just
