Two Pommie Sheilas: 40C be damned! I still want my traditional UK turkey and Christmas pudding

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me ... a perfectly British pine tree.

Yes, it’s that time of year when carols are blaring from every shopping centre speaker and it’s no longer possible to mock those putting up decorations “too early”.

It’s also the time of year when I start to prepare for my weird amalgam of festive activities as befits a woman with her heart in two places at once.

While most West Aussies hit the beach on Christmas morning — plotting their arvo barbecue feast of seafood followed by “festive” pav — I will be stubbornly clinging to my very British tradition of roast turkey, potatoes and Christmas pudding. I won’t care if it is 40C out there.

Call me crazy but there are some aspects of life in Britain that I simply can’t give up, particularly when it comes to Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my early-morning festive swim at the beach. Granted, it’s more about snapping a few pics of me in a Santa hat, bathers and thongs and then posting them on Facebook to greet friends and family back home when they wake to their freezing festivities, but at least it’s one Australian tradition I have embraced.

But real pine trees (I don’t care that I’m allergic to it and the dog treats it as an extra large water bowl), proper British Quality Street (sorry, Aussie chocolate just isn’t the same) and the Queen’s speech are must-haves in my household on Christmas Day.

Every year I spend several hours on stir-up Sunday making a Christmas pudding, despite knowing I’ll be the only one to eat it, with all the Aussies in the family shaking their heads as they tuck into a cooling ice-cream cake.

I’ll happily mix in a few new traditions, too — who doesn’t love the annual gift of thongs and sunscreen from the in-laws or the late afternoon swim in the pool instead of a post-prandial snooze on a sofa — but it’s simply not cricket to miss out on the British staples altogether.

Every year I spend several hours on stir-up Sunday making a Christmas pudding, despite knowing I’ll be the only one to eat it, with all the Aussies in the family shaking their heads as they tuck into a cooling ice-cream cake.

But, as a Pom in Perth on December 25, the main tradition I’ll uphold is spending at least an hour of the day trying to beat the Skype traffic to get through to the rellies back in Blighty to show off our tans.

And I guarantee it will be the same conversation as last year and the year before that — all about the weather, of course, and cries of: “It’s just so weird to think it’s hot over there” as the entire family crowds around a screen in their best Christmas jumpers.

A wise woman once told me that when you leave your home country to set up house somewhere else you will forever belong to both and neither place.

There’s no time of year I think of her advice more than at Christmas. It’s tough to be so far from those you love, but it’s those small things that keep you from wallowing in homesickness.

So, while all those around me may mock, I’m making my list of things to prepare for Christmas and I don’t care if it’ll be the middle of a heatwave, those ingredients for mulled wine are still on it.

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