Columnist David Wood looks at the unusual ways he’s spent Christmas

COLUMNIST David Wood reflects on unusual Christmas Days: journalism in Darwin, milking cows, silver service waiting, drinking with aid workers in Timor and chatting with his parents’ strange friends.

The author kicking back at the Darwin Post Office. He voted this the best airconditioning in Darwin and spent many contemplative days there, much to the disgust of management. Picture: Hels Orr

CHRISTMAS in Darwin can feel like you’ve climbed into Satan’s jocks. It is hot and it is sweaty and you think you’re going to be in there for eternity.

You know you must have done something pretty bad to end up there but knowing exactly what bad thing put you there is difficult.

You sit there in your own jocks just wanting a monsoon trough in Santa’s sack, which can turn the weather biblical in another way.

It can seem like out in Humpty Doo there is some bloke named Noah herding two crocs and a couple of buffalo onto a big wooden boat that’s far bigger than something you’d go barra fishing on. Arc-like perhaps.

When he was at work at the NT News he was much harder at it but still very contemplative.

The author knows it is important to protect yourself with a tin foil hat when reporting on paranormal activities.

I’ve worked the majority of my adult, and teenage Christmas Days.

I spent five Christmases in Darwin as an “orphan”. And because so many people who live in Darwin don’t come from Darwin, the only people really left was a gaggle sitting around with workmates celebrating that they’d escaped spending time with their family at Christmas again.

At the NT News I worked most Christmas Days. What would people do if they couldn’t read about UFOs on December 26?

But it’s not even UFO season so the stories are hard to get.

I spent one Christmas morning writing a poor taste Christmas gift guide. A reindeer gimp mask, a knitted “willy warmer” for those cold Darwin build up mornings, wonder jocks that accommodate two people and very fittingly, the wine rack cask bra.

One of my brilliant Christmas gift ideas.

I’m dreaming of a yowie Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know.

I don’t know what I did for the rest of it — tried to find a yowie expert no doubt.

And after knock off, then there is grog.

It’s always drinking weather and Darwin and if there is a promise of a cyclone coming it’s not unreasonable for a Darwinite to buy 25 slabs of beer, a small bottle of water, some matches and candles and a tin of baked beans to get them through.

The one year the NT News was not going to publish on Christmas Day a cyclone started tracking towards the city and we hauled our arses into work. It of course, did a work around, missed Darwin and caused a freight train to derail a few hundred kilometres south and unload copper sulfate into a river on Boxing Day. So my Boxing Day was spent by the side of river with no radio reception so I couldn’t listen to the cricket.

But I grew up far away from there in Victoria; a loved unit of labour on my parent’s dairy farm.

It was really difficult to give up the glamour of being covered in cow manure on Christmas Day. Pic: AFP Photo/Jean-Sebestien Evard

It was like working on Satan’s farm. While not like being in his jocks, it did feel it was in the same neighbourhood as hell sometimes. I am not calling my dad Satan ... well I guess I am.

My dad didn’t believe in employing anyone to milk the cows on Christmas Day. He didn’t think he should be getting someone to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

Luckily he had a son.

“David, would you like to milk the cows?”

What is a five-year-old going to say?

And I was free labour.

“You can open you Christmas presents when the milk vat is full.”

All I wanted for Christmas was a robotic milking machine.

I trudged off in the heat in my rubber boots, singing “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the f**king way ...”

The five-year-old bit may be an exaggeration but as George Orwell wrote: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

And I don’t think my dad knows what the internet is so I can say what I like.

The afternoon milking was a “quick” milking but cows don’t stop s**ting on you in the dairy just because it is Christmas.

Milking on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day is part of the reason why I don’t pump around in a “I love four tits” T-shirt.

It meant we couldn’t leave the farm.

But growing up Catholic, Christmas has always been a beautiful time to reflect on my great shame in the eyes of a god I didn’t believe in. Even milking the cows couldn’t make up for my sinful ways.

I also worked on Christmas Day while working on the Shepparton News in northern Victoria. Shepp is an open-plain bogan zoo and the Herald Sun called it the murder capital of Victoria when I lived there. That was coincidental, I wasn’t responsible for the deaths but they did end after I left.

It meant I didn’t have to milk the cows and gave me more time to reflect on my great shames.

Shepparton’s only tourist attraction — apart from the murders — where people “flock” into town to buy dinted tins of peaches. Picture: Mark Stewart

One Christmas lunch I sat at dinner table of the photographic editor’s house, with his mum, bored kids, deli sliced ham and a cold Woolies chook.

And the police scanner sitting at the head of the table telling me of the latest fire truck movements across half the state.

It wasn’t depressing at all.

I once also donned white gloves as a silver service waiter with a horrible hangover while people who were too mazy to cook for themselves abused me.

And another time I took way too much booze to a Christmas lunch of pretentious and almost teetotalling aid workers in Dili in East Timor before being chased by a dog I suspected of having rabies on my way home.

Last year I was farming, and it was the middle of harvest season for the barley crops. I expected to be driving the un-air-conditioned tractor circa 1977, with the chaser bin alongside the header allowing it to unload while still harvesting.

The author driving to work in Shepparton. Picture: Mark Stewart

But it rained and the moisture content of the grain was too high so I headed off for my first family Christmas in maybe seven years.

The dairy herd have long gone and I found myself at 3pm being a little unsure of what to do.

You mean I can just sit in the chair and sleep off lunch?

It seemed a bit odd.

Instead I got to sit around and chat with my parent’s very strange friends.

That didn’t seem odd, it was odd.

It’s hard to pick a favourite Christmas.

But I determined to reclaim Christmas for myself.

This year I am kicking back in Canberra — which may not sound like a great start to redemption — with my family.

And I am going to bloody enjoy it if it kills me.