Andrew and I have been together now for almost 4 years, and that means we have had 4 Christmases together.  All have been memorable for one reason or another, and most have been related to incidents at Kosciuszko National Park.

Our first Christmas together was in Horsham with my family.  I spent the day sitting around with my leg elevated because I had a broken bone, a foot that felt like it was swelling and a sore calf when I lowered my foot.  I had broken a bone in my foot at Charlottes Pass in Kosciuszko National Park a few days earlier when I had slipped down some steps, and on Boxing Day I was diagnosed with a 6 cm clot in a superficial vein in my leg.  We saw a lot of medical professionals in a short period of time that Christmas period.

The next Christmas found us back at Kosciuszko National Park where we had snow on Christmas day.  At our campsite it was pretty slushy and didn’t sit on the ground, but we took a drive to Charlottes Pass and the snow was thick enough to throw a snowball or two.

Last year was the first Christmas I haven’t had to travel in at least 20 years.  I was nearly 8 months pregnant and we decided it was best to stay put and not make the trek to Victoria.  My parents flew up to Sydney to spend Christmas day with us, and Aurelie and Nico also had lunch with us.

This year we decided to go back to Kosciuszko National Park for Christmas, as Nathan isn’t a great traveller and we thought that driving to Victoria would just take too long.  Anyway, we wanted to take Nathan camping, as we were sure he’d enjoy being outdoors.  So Christmas day was lovely, the weather was fantastic, and Andrew’s parents joined us at the campground with their camper trailer.  Nathan just loved crawling into and out of the tent, so we left the inside zipped down so he could play in there and move freely.  In the afternoon Andrew decided to have a look at the thermorest that I was sleeping on, because it seemed to have a hole in it and wasn’t staying inflated.  Andrew was in the tent when he called out to me and asked if anyone would have put a rubber snake in our tent.  HUH???  No, I couldn’t imagine that.  So we pulled most things out of the tent, carefully avoiding the small, motionless snake.  We got a stick and Andrew had a go at poking it…it moved where the stick touched it but the rest of the snake stayed still.  If it was real, then it certainly wasn’t very lively!  Andrew eventially removed the snake from our tent by getting it over the end of the stick.  It was real, but dead.  Our mostly likely explanation was that the snake had crawled into the tent during the day because it was hot in there, and burrowed underneath the thermorests.  When Andrew was moving around in the tent he must have kneeled on the Thermorest on top of it and killed it.  Whatever the reason we ended up with a dead snake (Highlands Copperhead) in our tent underneath Andrew’s thermorest, and it just brings home how easily Nathan (or any of us) could have been bitten and I feel lucky that nothing like that happened.

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