January 26, 2007 and Australian friends and family are spread around the world.This year instead of back yard cricket and a BBQ and beers on the deck of a Queenslander with friends we celebrated Australia Day in Juhu but made sure all the Australian traditions were upheld.
As fate would have it, India has Republic Day on the 26th of January also, so before we celebrated our national day we celebrated theirs'. We were invited to party with our landlords in their the 5 story house, just up the road. 
We're getting used to the Indian way of entertaining, we arrived at 11.30pm with Jo, Cris & Nadine our new friends from Australia working with Leightons Asia, and the party was just getting started. The DJ was working the decks, the barmen were busy and the chefs were preparing vegetarian delights for a 2am meal.. Yup this is India, 2am dinner is a little late but this is how they do it. We had a great time and were one of the last to leave at 4am. In India when the food is over that is the signal for the party to shut down.
The sun rose on Australia Day and feeling a little worse for wear we prepared for the days events by connecting to the Triple J hottest 100 for the some of the top 20 tracks. It was fantastic to hear Australian radio as there are no English radio stations here. Megan and Jason hosted the party for the day. In true Aussie fashion we headed down the beach for a kick of the footy and of course beach cricket. Jason has been here for 18months and commented that we'll cause a bit of a stir on the beach, I thought he meant that tourist police on the beach would be unhappy we were drinking on an Indian "dry day" but no he meant a group of European people on the beach will gather a crowd. It didn't take long to see what he meant, the blankets went down and the men started arriving. Before long we were getting into the swing of it and we had a crowd standing at silly mid off.. The tall fella in the pic is Max, the opening batsman from Sweden. The locals were quite perplexed as to his batting style.. 
As with all beach cricket the tennis ball shat itself and we had no electrical tape so a new ball had to be sourced. This delay didn't deter the crowd, no, they paid good money for a game of cricket and they weren't leaving until we did. We made sure everyone got a bat and of course no getting out on the first or second ball. The party of the recent morning caught up with us after about 2 hours in the 34 degree Mumbai winter sun, and it was time to adjourn to Jason and Megan's for refreshments.
We were greeted into their beachside apartment with the stereo belting out Jimmy Barnes, Working Class Man, just for a bit of nostalgia..
Big thanks to them, they turned on a ripper afternoon, a few eskies of Kingfisher beer, some Australian wine, T Bones and eye fillets all the way from Australia and bangers on the BBQ. Frank from Victoria stood guard over the cooking operation whilst the cricket and Australian Open tennis battled for supremacy on the TV. Of course the best was yet to come... a pavlova, lamingtons and ice cream dessert!! Bombay Bliss!!
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