CHRISTMAS IN CAMP.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 7484, 25 February 1885, Page 6

CHRISTMAS IN CAMP.

Our Christmas weather this year has been exceptionally agreeable, and in marked contrast to the weather of last Christinas. Indeed, up to this time, our summer has been like English weather in June, and the Sydney, people have consequently much enjoyed their "camping out" all round the harbour. This " camping out" at Christmas has now become a regular institution, and has become so from the fact that domestic servants make it a practice to leave their employers just a few days before <the Christmas holidays. When the household is thus deprived of its usual working members the best way the non-workers find to get out of their difficulty is to shut up the house and camp out somewhere down the wooded bays and nooks of our harbour till the time when the servants are ready to return to their work. To give an instance : One of our wealthy citizens, whose household included ten servants, last year invited a large party of relatives from the country to spend Christmas with him. The guests had no sooner assembled than the servants departed without warning of any kind. The host was equal to the occasion. He was the owner of a commodious steam yacht, and the whole party camped Out, and spent their week fishing and shooting and picnicking, attending upon themselves. A few days ago I was out with a boating party at Middle Harbour, an arm of Port Jackson, usually as silent and deserted as if Sydney did not yet exist. Middle Harbour is situate, as the crow Hies, within a very few miles of the city, whose lights at night can be seen illuminating the atmosphere over the summits of the wooded hills which separate its waters from Sydney Harbour. We rowed from point to point, and inlet to inlet, seeking for an unoccupied place to spread our picnic, and were long in our search before we found one. The tents of " camping out" parties covered every eligible spot, and drums and penny whistles resounded along the rocks, as the children wandered up and down the shore. Most of these encampments were situate about 30 yards from the water's edge. On a pole erected in front a flag was flying, and under it a lantern which beaconed the place at night for those who had gone out fishing. Middle Harbour swarms with fish, the catching of which affords amusement, and an important addition to the commissariat department. So popular has this "camping out" become that many young men, principally clerks in merchants' and lawyers' offices, " camp out" all the summer, and some of them even continue their tent life the whole year round, going to business each morning in their boat and returning each evening to their sylvan solitude.—Sydney correspondent.