Bound for Botany Bay   Ah, Xmas, mistletoe, Xmas trees, snow,
hot roast dinners with Yorkshire pud, plum puddings with
threepences in. Could be at Manor Farm with the Pickwick Club
could we not? Except we’re not. We’re in Western Australia in
the 1950s. The temperature outside is 40 degrees C, inside
hotter as the wood-fired oven cooks the roast chicken and
potatoes. The “snow” is artificial, powder sprinkled on a
northern hemisphere pine. The assembled family are sweating with
the heat. The children are demanding to go to the beach but
being told to shoosh because it was Xmas. Ah yes, the Dickens
Xmas, the Prince Albert Xmas, just one of the many inappropriate
things exported from Britain to its former colony in the south
seas.  It would have been better for the Australian environment
if, on 26 January 1788, the ships rounding the Heads into Sydney
Harbour, had contained not English, Irish, Scots and Welsh
soldiers and convicts, but settlers from southern Africa, Middle
East, western China, or Chile.  Thing