Christmas farm gates bring joy and goodwill to travellers
They are crazy and creative, cobbled together with bags of stuffing or grass, old clothes, and odd assortments of farm equipment, old tyres and garden tools, liberally decorated with tinsel and bows. As I drive, my smile grows wider each time I see them.
Along the highways and byways of Australia, as Christmas approaches, farm gates and paddocks take on new life – hay bale reindeer, tyre snowmen, kangaroos wearing tinsel and Christmas T-shirts, and Santas galore.
From the tropics to Tasmania, farmers and those who live in remote areas have long embraced this form of celebration that brings joy to everyone who encounters it. It’s a wonderful expression of rural creativity.
For several years, I drove the roughly 1700km from Melbourne to Brisbane for Christmas, often taking the inland routes. It’s a long and sometimes tedious haul, but spotting roadside Santas and other Christmas-themed decorations became one of my obsessions to while away the drive. It provided reasons to stop, stretch my legs and snap some photos for my ever-growing collection. Since then, whenever I’ve been travelling in December, I’ve looked out for them everywhere and I’ve not been disappointed.
Sometimes it’s as simple as tinsel on a rural mailbox at the end of a long dirt driveway that vanishes into the distance. Others are more elaborate. After one particularly wet start to summer, I spotted Santa fishing from a rickety wooden dingy in a flooded field off the Newell Highway in New South Wales.
I’ve seen Santas on verandahs, Santa with an umbrella (yes, another wet season), Santa climbing a pole, Santa having a beer. Perched high in a roadside tree at Mission Beach, in Queensland, seven teddy bears, each wearing a Santa hat, were watched over by an equally festive plush reindeer.
Among the most memorable were a Santa in a crop-duster plane (no reindeer required!) on the road between West Wyalong and Forbes in New South Wales, and, far from any obvious driveway, also on the side of the Newell, a cycling Santa, seemingly paused en route to delivering a red sack bursting with parcels.
In Tasmania last year, on assignment for Australian Geographic writing a story about the state’s forgotten Chinese history, I added more to my image collection, including a snowman made from an old tyre, painted white, with eyes, ‘carrot’ nose and a Santa hat.
Sometimes, there are friends to greet the curious passer-by – a tribe of vocal goats greeted me when I stopped in Queensland’s Scenic Rim to photograph their gorgeous farm gate adorned with big red Christmas bows and tinsel. Above the gate, pinned to the palm trees, was a Santa sack and a bright Christmas tree.
Tasmanian dairy farmers Michele and Brian Lawrence have been creating holiday-season tableaux in the paddock near their farm gate for the past five years or so.
“If you can make something that puts a smile on someone’s face – and on your own – it’s a nice thing,” Michele says. “It’s important to remember that Christmas is not a great time for everyone.”
The couple, who run a 1200-head dairy farm near Meander, about 10 minutes’ drive from Deloraine in Tasmania’s central north, also create other seasonal displays.
“We started with an Easter display during COVID in 2020, followed by an ANZAC soldier when no-one was allowed to go to ANZAC Day services, and it just grew from that,” says Michele.
“As farmers, we don’t have a lot of spare time to contribute to the community, so if we can make people happy, it’s a way of doing that. People love it, so we make an effort. People toot and wave as they go past and we know that some of the local kids are eager to see what we’ll do each year.
“It’s nice that it has meaning to other people, as well as ourselves.”
Michele estimates that it takes around 12 hours to build their display, which features Christmas trees spray-painted on a tower of silage bales – and strung with lights – along with a sleigh pulled by a tractor, reindeer and teddy bears.
“The distance from the road is very forgiving,” she laughs when describing her spray-painting skills.
Newcomers to the Christmas farm gate tradition are Sarah and Mark Giles, who moved to their property in Queensland’s Scenic Rim in February and have enthusiastically embraced the tradition.
“We’re city slickers who started out with three acres and now have 45 acres as we slowly expand,” Sarah says.
The Giles family shares their farm, Northview Highlands, at Charlwood, about 10 minutes’ drive from Boonah, with Highland ‘coos’, Valais blacknose sheep, pygmy goats and two alpacas called Ben and Jerry. As well as their breeding business, they welcome visitors for farm tourism experiences including feeding, patting and brushing.
For their first Christmas at Northview Highlands, Sarah and children Hunter, 6, and Elliana, 3, decorated the gate with an abundance of fairy lights, candy canes, ribbons and bows, tinsel and an elf. Next year, there are bigger plans with an inflatable illuminated Highland cow on order.
So, if you’re on the road this festive season, make sure you look out for Santa and his friends along the way – and give them a toot!
