Exploring… Oceania

Pretend trips exploring Oceania including Christmas in June, and visits to Samoa, New Zealand and Australia.

Pretty much the first thing I did when both the kids were born was apply for New Zealand citizenship for them as Mark is New Zealand born and bred. So, very early on in our pretend travels we went to New Zealand (not least as an excuse to order a box full of New Zealand snacks). Since then we have also had wonderful pretend visits to Australia and Samoa and last year (2020) when the world was lacking magic we had a first Antipodean Summer-Christmas. Christmas in June was such a success that we are doing it again next month (and I’ve heard a rumour that its going to be pretty easy to cater for as Aldi are stocking up on Christmas goodies). So here is how to take pretend trips exploring Oceania including Christmas in June.

New Zealand

I asked a friend what she thought of when I said ‘New Zealand’ and she said sheep! So naturally we thought it would be super fun to go to a farm. Windmill farm isn’t very far from us and as an added bonus in the spring you can feed the adorable lambs. It’s a great day out for everyone and we all enjoyed it so much that we went twice!

Baking has been a big part of our New Zealand visits, using my mother in laws kiwi recipes. We have made delicious pavlovas and also my favourite Lamingtons! You can dm me for the pavlova recipe if you want, but if you are feeling lazy all the big supermarkets sell meringue’s and you can just have the fun of decorating. So whether you learn the Haka together from YouTube, have a lamb roast, read Hairy Mcclary, or play rugby in the back yard – I know you will have a blast when you pretend visit New Zealand. In fact – after writing this, I think we might ‘go’ again. You can read about our pretend visits here and here!

Australia

I have been lucky enough to visit Australia a few times in my life in reality and I am a big fan of the Aussie lifestyle, their sense of fun and their love of the outdoors. We had a great day eating Vegemite sandwiches, cooking BBQ food and throwing boomerangs in the park (badly). We also used YouTube to find and watch The Wiggles – which are a fab group of Aussie childrens entertainers. Here’s our favourite song from them – singing all about us – their Kiwi cousins!

The high spot of our visit to Australia was definitely a visit to a local trampoline warehouse where the kids dressed as kangaroos and jumped their hearts out. Planning pretend days can involves leaps of imagination and this one made me laugh out loud. I also failed to get any non blurry photos, such was the speed of my little kangaroos! Read more about our bouncy adventures here.

samoa

Growing up, Mark had a number of Samoan friends and Samoa and New Zealand are very closely linked as well the Samoan culture has a lot in common with the native Maori culture that we all love. As such one of the high spots was a skype call with Samoan friends teaching us all about their language and culture.

One thing we love to do when we pretend visit is learn local dances (my favourite was a Bollywood dance tutorial).

The Siva Samoa dance was super fun to learn as well and Freddie was very good at it! We did some really lovely weaving in pretend Samoa and played Kilikiti too which is a type of cricket. Find out more about our Samoan adventures here.

As you know we like to bake on our pretend days – especially on days when we don’t find a local restaurant from the place we are visiting as its so nice to use all of our senses and to get a taste for the country. In Samoa we made Pani Popo which is a type of sweet coconut bread. It was pretty simple to make but I did have to make the bread from scratch so it did demand a bit of time and a little skill.

Antipodean Christmas

Without a doubt this is my absolute favourite new tradition. We often have had an extra Christmas on the summer (their winter) when we visited Marks family in New Zealand. Last year, not least due to lockdown boredom, we decided to do it the other way round.

Penny still talks about Summer-Christmas all the time and can’t wait to celebrate again this year. It’s very simple to set up and requires nothing more than a couple of cheap garden toys and sweets to put in a stocking, the Christmas tree dragged out of the loft and a BBQ! Read all about it here and here and please do try it for yourself!

And that’s the best of our pretend trips exploring Oceania including Christmas in June. I a plan to pretend to go to Fiji next so let me know if you have any ideas for that!