Australia comes but once a year, and that once is January 26th. Which is pretty much perfectly midsummer in Australia, but therefore, pretty much perfectly midwinter in Iceland. Fortunately, because it's not strictly midwinter, we actually have more light, but it's still winter. There's still snow, wind, blue skies, clouds and rain, in any combination of those.

But that doesn't stop us! Oh no! After the success of last year's Australia Day bbq I was keen to do it again. I invited a few more people, trying to get the word out to a few more aussies here in Iceland, and we got a few new faces along. The current political unrest probably stole some of my crowd away, a few people left early to go back downtown to protest, but we still had a good turnout.

I even got to go on the radio and talk about the day! Zoe from Iceland Review Invited me to come and talk on Hello Hafnafjörður, a multi lingual show for immigrants in Iceland. Never having been "in the studio" before, that was fun :) (I'm led to believe that my segment might appear there in the future some time....)

But, back to the preparations for the FOOD! Kata and I had been up late the night before putting together some props, and I was putting the finishing touches on some lamingtons. Lamingtons are pretty straightforward to make, you just have to dick around a bit with the icing. I made lamingtons because I had completely FAILED to procure any PRAWNS! DAMNIT! I've had prawns for Australia Day ever since I left Australia, I even had to teach myself how to cook them. But this year, the local asian markets were simply out of them. I blame kreppa. Getting in my way!

But, we had lamingtons, and we had bbqs, thanks to the wonderful Oli, and the wonderful Ellen and Sara, who each lent a bbq. We had kegs of beer again, and again, because everyone brought their own, we had heaps of beer left over :) We also had lamb, and chilli chicken, and then some other people had hot dogs, hot dogs wrapped in smoked mutton, pineapple slices on the grill, all the trimmings. Oh, and how could I forget the vegemite sandwhiches? Lee gave every foreigner who arrived a vegemite and cheese sandwhich, though I don't think many of them appreciated his generous offer :)

This year we also moved the party down onto the beach itself, which was much more scenic, and a bit easier given that we weren't dealing with 12cm of snow on the ground. Still, carrying full size bbqs and kegs of beer down rocky sea walls is never much fun. What was also fun was having the tide come in steadily all afternoon. By the time we were about ready to leave, the beach had shrunk to within a few feet of the bbq, and by the time we left, it was just five people and two kegs of beer sitting on the highest piece of sand remaining.

With the darkness encroaching with the incoming tide, we elected to move the party indoors, for the few hardcore remaining, Kata, Alda, Kolly and I, though we didn't have much time before we had to go and get ready for _another_ party that weekend. Bella and Sölvi were moving out of their appartment, and had announced their engagement, and were having a super hero dress up party. I don't have any pictures from there, I was wearing fish gutting gloves and didn't really have finger control to use a camera in those things.

Some pictures below are from Guido, they should be tagged as such. Thanks also to my sister Helen for giving me a crocodile for christmas.