Is Christmas Island
- A magical place lit by colourful Northern Lights, where elves in warm red and green suits work all year round in toy factories, wrapping and minding Santa’s reindeer.
- An icy island close to the North Pole where it snows 300 days of the year, which can be reached only by ship in the summer, where the only people who live there are scientists who research arctic wildlife on snow-mobiles?
or - A small tropical island like an ink-splot in the Pacific where the most populous inhabitants are Santa-Claus red crabs?
Answer: (c)
Christmas Island is a beautiful island between Indonesia and Australian which was formed long ago by an underwater volcano. It’s only twice the size of ‘Greater Oxford’, Oxford including outlying Botley, Cowley and Kidlington and the human population is around 2000, a quarter of whom live in the capital ‘city’ or biggest town which is called Flying Fish Cove!
Christmas Island was named for its discovery on Christmas day in 1643 and is indeed most famous for its red crabs. Although they can only be found on Christmas Island and its neighbour Cocos Island, there are nearly 50 million of them on the island. Every year they travel like a scarlet tidal wave from the island’s central plateau to the beaches to lay their eggs in the sea which is natural phenomenon.
The island is also home to the huge coconut crab, the largest crab in the world, which can climb trees, crack coconuts with its pincers and is as big and heavy as a turkey.
So, as the average temperature in December on Christmas Island is 25°C, pack your swimwear for a beach barbeque.
Anyone for a crab kebab?
Esther Lafferty's Inkwell 