De Schoene Ocean Strasse.

The last couple of weeks have seen me out of the cyber loop as I've been van bound for 1000 kilometres on the road from Melbourne, along the Great Ocean Road, through The Grampians and on into Southern Australia towards Adelaide. The trip was as bizarre as it's going to get when you're crammed in an Ozzy Osbourne tour van with three Germans, tinsel, party hats and a Christmas Cd taken from the front of a magazine. You know you're not at home when you're listening to "I'm Driving Home For Christmas" whilst watching endless desert, hearing a German cover version over the top and smelling your cool box fail. Sleeping on remote rocky beaches, in eucalyptus forests with koalas, on cliff tops with the most beautiful sunsets and in rain forests with messy schoolies- every night was a spectacle in it's own right.

It has to be the last day of our journey though, that was the most ridiculously out of place. In trying to find a beach for the night we drove through the rural South Australian town of Meningie where all the main streets were closed for no apparent reason. Before long we realised what we had stumbled upon, the annual Meningie Christmas parade. You can't fault them for trying, but as Europeans we found it difficult to take the thing seriously. The parade was made up of a series of hatchbacks with balloons attached, the towns ambulance draped in tinsel, an orchestra on a trailer, the wags of Meningie in their Santa frocks, about twenty kids on motorbikes and a few advertisement vehicles dragging through the twenty nine degree heat for about fifty metres. To be fair, to belittle this whilst one of the Spice Girls is probably turning on the lights back home seems harsh.

The Parade did pick up to as we decided to join it in our Ozzy van, party hats on, Christmas CD booming. It was a fine line between us completely taking the piss, but because I don't think many of Meningies population know who Ozzy Osbourne is, it went down a treat. A few hours earlier I was coming to terms with the fact that this year was never going to really feel like Christmas, but after serenading a group of festive farts from the window I could feel that seasonal spirit again.

Merry Christmas!