by Mimi Lu

Created on: November 28, 2007

Our Australian Family Tradition

The bustling and the hustling and the tantalizing aromas streaming ardently from the closed oven and the overpowering scent of excitement that thrums boldly in the air, the sibilant exhalation of the glad-wrap dispenser, the cutting and the chopping and the buttering, as the little silver knife pirouettes gracefully through the air, and the running to and the running fro by all including the bewildered puppy. Oh! Don't forget the esky! What other family tradition involves more perspiration, cooperation, innovation, peanut butter, choc-chip cookies, unexpected delights, deliciousness, exhilaration than the family picnic?

This family tradition was one of my earliest and fondest memories, growing up in the last decade of previous millennium. We lived in an apartment building near the heart of the city, and it was simply marvelous to escape to the verdant, albeit somewhat sanitized, wildernesses of the national park, to navigate our bulky luggage to the beaming oak tree next to the gushing river. The promiscuous violets eagerly tumbled down the gently undulating fields, like a glass of spilt red wine, rushing to meet our mutual friend the azure stream. The latter shrugged its broad shoulders in mirth, thus rippling its cerulean mantle, catching the sun's incessantly refracting rays, exploding kaleidoscopically. The venerable oak tree strummed the clear spring air with its dexterous fingers, harmonizing the song of the birds as they wove their melodious masterpieces onto the massive orchestral score in the sky.

The blazing sun, for its part was not idle either his smile slowly stole across his face as he watched the sky being reduced to uncontrollable giggles as he was tickled by the fingertips of the trees. The sun's unmitigated joy was contagious, as he anointed the entire landscape with his viscous liquid gold. It dappled the mischievous leaves, it caused the daisies to turn their heads in wonder, and the remaining compendium of wildflowers unleashed their glorious colours earnestly, to express their own awe and respect for this fiery ubiquitous orb.

And only after surveying and paying homage to this familiar, yet so enigmatically beautiful landscape, would my family sit down, after spreading out the picnic mat. And it was with a distinct solemnity, distilled from our previous hilarity and effusive excitement that my father would pronounce, the equivalent of saying grace in our atheist background: "Let the picnic begin."

Ah yes. The

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