After the plum pudding and perhaps roasted turkey, two poems -- 'Along by Merry Christmas Time' and 'The Fire at Ross's Farm' -- as reminders that while we inherited the traditions of a snowbound Yule, it is heat, smoke and the smell of burning bush that are more likely to mark our celebrations of the day

'It was towards the end of a long drought, and the country was like tinder for hundreds of miles round -- the ground for miles and miles in the broiling scrubs as bare as your hand, or covered with coarse, dry tufts ...'

'Lucky diggers who were with difficulty restrained from putting pound notes and nuggets and expensive lockets and things into the little ones’ stockings. Santa Claus in flannel shirt and clay-covered moleskins. Diggers who bought lollies by the pound and sent the little ones home with as much as they could carry'