For close to 50 years we’ve waged an ever-escalating battle against one other – and our home town
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or most people, New Year’s Eve is a time for regeneration, renewal and regret. For my family, it is a time for revenge, retribution and smashing your little cousin in the testicles with a water bomb so hard that you set back the onset of puberty by another calendar year.
Please, permit me to explain.
Since 1977 my parents have hosted an enormous New Year’s Eve/Day party in Western Australia for my very large (115 cousins as of last counting) and very singular family, plus our solid following of friends and hangers-on. Like most Shea events, the party revolves around tables and tables of food, a toadstool-shaped esky my eldest uncle made in the 60s (“the mushroom” keeps Emu Export ice cold for days), singing, teary speeches and shouting over one another at the top of our lungs.
