Hampers.

David and I went to Wakeley today, we'd never heard of this particular suburb of Sydney but it was near Prairiewood and we'd been there a few years ago so knew it was West of Liverpool and Fairfield. It was the Smith Family Christmas Hamper delivery day, I am a 'Smith' and we've been delivering these hampers the week before Christmas for more than 15 years. We drove to the Olympic site at Homebush to be greeted by the same lovely fellow who is always dressed up in a very convincing Santa suit but with his own white hair and real beard... he seems quite ageless, then after much paper handing over and being directed our car is piled up with hampers and bags of toys and we have directions to Wakeley.
We've noticed many changes over the years but it's hard to know if things have really changed or if we are just delivering in different places each year. When we started all those years ago we would deliver 15 or so hampers sometimes as far away as south of Campbelltown which would take more than an hour to get to and several hours to deliver... the people we were delivering to were mostly Caucasian Australian. Slowly things have changed and today we delivered to only 5 people who were all Middle Eastern looking with accents... so not born here, one had a boat on a trailer in the garden, another a newish car which made us question it all a bit but then we wondered how poor do we want these people to be?? and what a ridiculous question we were asking ourselves. We have no idea of their circumstances and if the Smith Family have them on their list that’s enough for us. One lovely surprise though... three of the families were very genuine in inviting us in for a cup of tea or coffee and that’s never happened before so all in all a good day.