Six murals were installed across the City of Ballarat in the lead up to Christmas 2025.

I explored Christmas in a local context using an illustrative and watercolour style with soft pastel colours. I created scenes with Ballarat landmarks and local natural environments to convey our summertime experience of Christmas holidays (rather than use the European imagery). All of the Christmas tropes are present, but they are slightly subverted. Santa is pictured, but he is on the side of an icecream van and the snow cones are melting slightly in the summer sun. In another scene a wombat scratches his butt on a tree, making white eucalyptus blossoms fall like snow. I wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge our important animal friends that we share a habitat with. It is the time of year where we celebrate outdoors and have experiences in nature and may be lucky enough have encounters with them. I anthropomorphised a few characters who are acting out Christmassy activities.

A ‘find it’ activity was included within each image for two different age groups.