Australia Day, Greenland-style

A couple of years ago, the Australian Ambassador to Denmark visited Nuuk and, through the grapevine, his office was put in touch with me. Because I’m Australian. His personal secretary suggested having an event where the Ambassador could meet the Australian community in Nuuk and asked whether I could help by getting in touch with them to arrange it. I replied that there were only five of us, three of whom were me and my family. The other two were a friend of ours and her baby daughter. So we suggested, as an alternative, that the Ambassador come over to our place for dinner and we would invite the other two around. And that’s what happened. But that was then. Now there aren’t so many Australians in Nuuk. To my knowledge, it’s just the three of us.

But neither the lack of Australians, nor just about any weather-related obstacle will stop us from having a barbeque on Australia Day, or any other day when we happen to feel like it, for that matter. We like barbeques.

Like Australia, which has, of late, been melting in blistering forty plus degree celsius temperatures, our Australia Day was also quite warm. At least according to my son. On the morning of Australia Day, he stepped out of the front door and immediately commented that he might have to remove his gloves and coat because it was “too hot.” It was almost three degrees celsius, after all.

More of an issue, however, was actually finding our barbeque. Neglected over the Christmas period, it was now buried under about three feet of snow. Undeterred, my husband set to work with a spade and the barbeque slowly emerged, along with a small clearing around it, just large enough for him to stand in. Hunched over in the darkness of the early winter evening, the driving snow relentlessly coating him in a fluffy white film, he tended the barbeque as the rest of us sipped our drinks and watched comfortably from the warmth of the living room.

As usual, it was an excellent Australia Day meal, if slightly different fare from what most back home might have had. Instead of snags and steaks, ours were enormous marinated reindeer ribs from an animal shot last hunting season. And as usual I tried, and failed, to make a successful pavlova: some things never change.