It might not be a very net-zero-friendly activity, but driving around to view the Christmas light show is part of Australian culture. In essence, it’s a bunch of festive snoops partaking in a drive-by, transfixed by how many coloured lights and themed ornaments people managed to drape over their homes without falling to their deaths. There’s not much sport for it in the Teal suburbs, but in the country the whole thing has gotten out of hand in the best possible ‘race to blow the fuse box’ way.

After an accidental dusk drinking session at some pub we’d never heard of before stumbling in with (very) distant relatives, my mother decided it would be best if we packed my older brother into the car and join the thousand-odd convoy to see the Christmas lights on the hill before heading home.

Nature called to him as soon as we reached the precipice. Now dark and with no moon, we let him stumble out into a bushy area by the side of the road and arranged to pick him up on the next cycle through the light display. That was the last we saw of him… for a while.

We come from one of those survival-based families. After three laps around the Christmas lights we considered heading off and leaving the mystery of a lost sibling to a more respectable hour. Then my brother stepped out of the scrub close to (but not exactly) where we’d left him. He looked a bit odd – glassy-eyed with one leg soaked up to the thigh and a few twigs stuck to his head. We didn’t hear a word from him for the rest of the night.

According to my brother, all he’d wanted to do was have ‘a quiet little wee’ by the side of the road. The alcohol had definitely slowed his logic. Already ‘out’ and with a cigarette lit and hanging from his right hand, he realised that the bumper-to-bumper Christmas light connoisseurs could still see him. Sensibly (?) he decided to brave the veil of insects. ‘Two steps forward…’ my brother recounts, before descending into laughter. ‘And on the second step, there was nothing in front of me.’

He immediately rocketed through forty metres of near-vertical scrub and gravel in the pitch black, somehow remaining mostly upright – caught somewhere between surfer and base-jumper. It all ended very suddenly with his leg splashing into a reservoir and his left arm folded backwards, gripping onto a tree.

‘I’ve still got my cigarette in my right hand. My willy’s free. My left hand is hanging onto a tree and my leg is in the water. So… I finished the cigarette, had a wee, and stared up at the obstacle course the universe just threw me down thinking what an effing weird way to end.’ It was essentially like falling off the edge of civilisation into another plane of existence – with no phone, which he had the presence of mind to leave in the car.

‘I knew I had three laps, maybe four before the family lost interest in my survival,’ he said, before walking toward the [Christmas] ‘light’.

Christmas is generally a pretty dangerous activity. Seafood is high on the priority list for a half-decent lunch, but instead of going down to the jetty and cleaning out the local fish shop, my brother liked to go spearfishing in Port Stephens with a friend who had a habit of shooting him with the spear gun. ‘You’re in front, mate…’ my brother insisted, with his flipper sporting a hole from the last accident.

Port Stephens is known as a shark breeding ground frequented by white pointers. On this particular day, he took off from the southern-side boat ramp and caught a tidal run expecting two hours in good daylight to catch cuttlefish, squid, and flathead.

‘In those days, you didn’t worry about bait bags – you just tied the fish around you. So, you’ve got a rope around your waist and whatever you catch you tie onto yourself so that you become a giant meat hook.’

As they swam towards The Heads, they were weighed down by bleeding fish with a thick blood-burly going into the water, but because the tide was running out into the ocean, none of the large, sharp-toothed creatures in the bay behind were able to pinpoint the source.

‘John’s in front of me and we’re swimming out through the heads when I did a quick duck-down under the water and looked back between my legs. Around the two heads of Port Stephens, there’s all these canyons in the bottom. When it’s clear you can see all these rocks and cliff edges. It goes down about sixty metres.’

‘I’m looking behind me and I can see all these sharks – at least fifteen four-ish metre sharks – just schooling in behind us. They had caught up to the scent they just don’t know where exactly it is. By this stage we’d swum into the open ocean. I caught up to John and did a ‘look at me’ hand movement and then pointed down. I mean, it’s only a matter of time before someone is getting eaten.’ The situation was made slightly worse by the ocean sharks moving in from the other direction. Being eaten appears to be a certainty, so the pair of them caught the ocean waves and allowed themselves to be thrown onto the rocks, strewn over the kelp and seaweed before doing a walk of shame back around the shoreline.

‘Either being eaten or being lacerated… You have to get close enough to the rocks so that the waves wash you up onto them. Then you hang on for your life as the water drains back – then scamper up the rocks as fast as you can before the next wave hits. By the time you do this three or four times, you’re covered in blood and now the seagulls are interested.’

As my brother put it, when you’re in the water with sharks and you know that you’re the one being hunted – it changes your perspective on the world, and Christmas.