When December begins to roll around, Sydney starts to light up with seasonal displays – as streets and suburbs across the city turn sparkly. But if you want to dive head first into the festive spirit, it’s worth heading out of the city – two hours north of Sydney, you’ll find the largest Christmas lights display in the Southern Hemisphere.
This Christmas season, Hunter Valley Gardens has turned luminous with the biggest Christmas lights display in Australia and beyond. Spread across eight magical acres, the spectacular display features more than four-million lights – all illuminating a magical fairground setting.
Lit up by strings of fairy lights, towering 10-metre Christmas trees and sparkly candycanes, you’ll find a ferris wheel, a traditional Venetian carousel, a 35-metre-long superslide, swing chairs and spinning teacups – operating from 6pm until 10pm every night. If you’re keen to meet the man with the hat, you can head to the Igloo Marquee where Santa himself will be in residence every night until Christmas between 5.30pm and 10pm. The magic of Christmas will also be brought to life by roaming performers, with magical zones – from a playful ‘Toyland’ to a ‘Christmas World’ complete with a writing station where you can pen letters to the North Pole – waiting to be explored.
To keep you sustained for a night amongst the lights, food stalls will be on site serving everything woodfired pizza to waffle on a stick.
Keen? You can check out the program here, and you can get hold of tickets over here – kids under three enter for free, children's tickets start at $30, and adults tickets start at $40.
If you want to make a weekend of it, we’d suggest exploring the stunning vineyards of the Hunter Valley, or heading east to the beautiful coastal city of Newcastle – it was recently ranked as one of the world’s best-kept secrets, and we have to agree.
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