Easter Egg Hunts

I’m always curious as to what traditions people have, especially at certain times of the year like Easter and Christmas. With Easter almost over for another year I couldn’t help remembering the Easters of my childhood. Mum and Dad never went overboard with the chocolate; we generally received a chocolate bunny, maybe a Humpty Dumpty egg and a couple of small hollow eggs. But the best thing was always the hunt.

I remember one Easter at my Nanna and Grandad’s farm in Merredin. For those of you not familiar with Western Australia, Merredin is a wheatbelt town about three hours north-east of Perth. In April the temperatures can still be pretty hot which added an element of risk to the Easter egg hunt. If you didn’t find the chocolate fast enough, it would melt! Nanna’s farmhouse was one of those old, high ceiling houses with a big, wide veranda running all the way around. The farm dogs had to be shut out of the yard for the duration of the hunt to ensure they didn’t disrupt it and leave someone without an egg. This particular year my sister, two cousins and I raced outside and started searching. The rules were you weren’t allowed to eat any eggs until the hunt was over, and then you had to divide the spoils evenly so it didn’t matter if someone found more eggs than someone else. The first couple of eggs were easy enough to find but toward the end there was one big bunny still missing and the day was heating up.

We searched every nook and cranny we could think of to no avail. Finally someone thought to look up, and sure enough the last bunny was lounging in the rafters of the veranda – luckily unmelted!

Another year we had friends visiting and there were five children to go on the hunt. That year there was a packet of those mini solid eggs – not enough chocolate to make a child sick, but so many more to have to find. It was a win-win for parents and children. 🙂 That hunt lasted ages and we ended up with what seemed to be a huge mountain of chocolate. Of course each of us check the count of the eggs to make sure we all got the same. I think there may have been one extra egg which Dad easily sold by eating it!

These days I must admit I’m a bit of a chocolate snob. The quality of chocolate in many of the eggs just doesn’t cut it for me, although this year I did discover Ferrero eggs and they’ve now become a firm favourite.

I’d love to hear your Easter stories in the comments below! Happy Easter everyone.

Easter vector designed by Freepik