Halloween in Oz

The eyes of Texas are upon you.

Being our first Halloween here in Australia, I was surprised to find out that it has only recently begun to be celebrated here.  Many of the children from the boy’s school would be trick or treating for the first time.  There is still a great debate not only in Alice Springs but all over the country as to whether they should celebrate this decidedly American holiday.  My understanding is that Alice Springs is a little ahead of the major cities due to the Americans living here. 

American Gothic

 

On Friday night we went to the Annual Halloween party - very adult, very fun.  It takes place in a cul de sac just a block away from us, perfect walking distance.  They had a band, a few home brew kegs and though I did not see it, I heard they were playing beer pong.  The costumes were absolutely incredible!  It was so fun to see many put so much thought into their costumes.  Some of my favorites were the many paintings with their own faces poking through, we saw a couple as the American Gothic painting, The Scream and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe.  There was also a guy that was a twin mattress with a dummy blonde beside him in bed.  JD and I took the easy way out and wore our Dr. Shots lab coats, the main reason being we were going there directly after a Masters Games volunteer’s thank you party.  The party was attended by Laucko, a local radio personality – it was fun hearing him talk about it on the radio, he kept referring to it as a crazy, American, Halloween block party – sounded like he had a blast.

On Saturday the rec association at JD's work put on a Halloween festival.  They had games, a haunted house and costume contests.  The boys wore their Captain America and Wolverine costumes and ran around for a few hours. The weather was perfect!  I took them through the haunted house when we first arrived, I asked for no one to jump out and scare them because they were already nervous - they both felt it was scary enough with the decorations alone.

Dillon helping to clean out the seeds - looking forward to roasting them later.

Jake helping with the face.

 We purchased our pumpkin at the local grocers, at a cost of $20.00.  We knew we wanted to do something special with the design so this year we carved the eyes in the shape of Texas.  What a hit it was, on Halloween night we had numerous people taking pictures of our pumpkin.  We did not have much in the way of decorations, I somehow only managed to bring a small tub of Halloween decorations for inside the house but my friend Marylee has offered to buy some things on clearance and send it to us for next year. Thank you Marylee!

The beginning of the trick-or treaters, got too busy after this to take any more pics.

 Halloween night began with a potluck dinner at our neighbor’s house; I think there were 12 families or so there. They start about 5:00 and with the temperature at 100 degrees, the poor kids were melting. Everyone comes over to our side of town for trick-or-treating and I mean EVERYONE!  I had been told that we would have hundreds of trick-or-treaters but seeing the crowds for myself was unbelievable.  I ordered 14 bags of Halloween candy from Walmart.com and it was gone in 2 hours.  At one point the street reminded me of Manhattan with crowds coming from both directions.  The children were very polite and appreciative of the American “lollies”, but I could not help but laugh at the many adults walking with their kids, all carrying their own bags – I am not used to hearing a 40 year old say trick-or treat!