David Jones department store is famous for its animated Christmas window displays. And rightly so. I’m only sorry I didn’t get out in the evening to capture these all lit up, but trust me, they are superb and every child in Sydney ought to be taken to look at them.
Ursula Dubosarsky the award-winning Sydney children’s author was thrilled when asked to write an original story with an Australian flavour for the windows this year.
“I was thinking kangaroos, wallabies and koalas,” Dubosarsky says, but she quickly came around to the idea of using a reindeer. “It suggested a nice story of the Australian experience, which is very often an immigrant experience. Apart from indigenous people, we all appeared here from other cultures.”
Dubosarsky took home the toy reindeer to use for inspiration, as she often does. “You get a bit more personality from a toy. You know how it is, you think your teddy bear is talking to you,” she says. “I still use that technique, so I sat there with the reindeer.”
The tale he told her, Reindeer’s Christmas Surprise, was about visiting all his animal friends with presents, before getting a lovely surprise himself at the end of the story.
TRAVEL WORDS 
Hi Jude 🙂 So glad you’re safely home. I didn’t know how you’d be with jet lag etc so was waiting patiently for you to ’emerge’. David Jones at last! I saw a little on Lignum Draco.
Hope Christmas isn’t too much of an anti-climax 🙂 Welcome home!
I’m not really a Christmas person now Jo. Loved it as a child and when I had children, but I’m not religious and it seems so commercialised now. Just been to the supermarket to stock up on basics and my mind was blasted by excesses of food that really no-one needs. Off to bed now though – a bit late for me, I have become used to early nights and early starts, though with it being dark until 8 am I am finding it difficult!
I said much the same to Sherri just the other day (re obscene greed). Sweet dreams of sunny beaches 🙂
wonderful Jude 🙂
💞✌🎄🎍