New Year's Day in St Kilda, Gently

The fireworks were last night. Today the only explosion is a hollandaise.

Australians celebrate New Year in the middle of summer, which sounds like a gift until you wake on the first of January at thirty-one degrees with a head full of sparkler smoke. I had watched the fireworks from Birrarung Marr with a hundred thousand strangers and a bottle of something pink. I regretted the pink.

The cure, I was told, was St Kilda. I took the tram down Fitzroy Street, swaying more than it did, and ordered eggs at Ovo Partido on Acland Street, where the waiter wore sunglasses indoors in solidarity.

Acland Street is famous for its cake shops, windows stacked with cheesecakes and Polish pastries, and I pressed my forehead against one like a child. Then St Kilda Beach in the late-morning sun, the sand hot, the bay flat and silver. I walked into the water up to my knees and stood there for a long time. My head improved by half.

After a lemon soda at Sal e Sombra on the Esplanade, I walked at dusk to the end of St Kilda Pier, where little penguins come home to the breakwater. A volunteer in a red shirt told me to keep my phone light off. The penguins arrived, waddling, wet, entirely unbothered. They have never had a hangover. I envied them.

Lived January 01, 2026.