About a surfing Santa, and a myth about Christmas Island...

These days, Santa does more than just getting into chimneys (which are disappearing or have been sealed up, anyway). For instance, he "hangs ten"...

The AFP story can be found on xin.msn's website:

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/weird/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5690861

Next, here's another Santa, depicted in this stamp, wading ashore to Australia's Christmas Island (famed for its red crabs):

Hold it, did I say Australia's Christmas Island? Yes, this little island, basking in the sun in the Indian Ocean and located near Indonesia, is Australian territory.

But there is a myth that the then self-governing British Crown Colony of Singapore under Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock sold Christmas Island to Australia in 1957!

The reality is that the British adminstered Christmas Island from Singapore, just as they administered Pedra Branca island in the South China Sea from Singapore. It was their prerogative to do as they wished on these far offshore territorial possessions.

In the eventuality, the British -- perhaps uncertain about the political leanings of a future independent Singapore nestled in a region as tumultuous as then Southeast Asia was --preferred to hand over Christmas Island to Australia to look after, just as they chose to continue to administer Pedra Branca from Singapore and eventually to transfer such administration to Singapore upon its independence.

The device the Brits used to transfer Christmas Island (to Australia) was a so-called sale, amounting to One Singapore Dollar. The Lim Yew Hock govenment signed the necessary papers, but, really, it had no choice in this. It seems that this device was used too when the Brits handed over military barracks to Singapore's MINDEF in later years.

Separately, I think the Australian government paid the Lim Yew Hock government a sum of money, but this was in compensation for loss of earnings from Christmas Island's phosphate mines.

But the myth that Singapore "sold out" Christmas Island to Australia persisted, as a Google search would readily show. See, for example, the excellent Remember Singapore blogsite, which, in the link below, has sketches of several other dramatic moments in our history:

http://remembersingapore.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/headlines-that-shook-singapore/