Oh Christmas tree oh Christmas tree… Santa's Place
Santa’s Place is a Christmas tree farm where you can choose your own tree – they don’t get much fresher than this (unless you have one growing at home).
When: Open July onwards, but extended hours in November and December. 10am – 5pm Sunday to Thursday and 10am – 9pm Friday and Saturdays
Where: 10 minutes past Frankston, Cnr Moorooduc Hwy & Bentons Rd, Moorooduc
What: Christmas tree farm and Christmas shop
Cost: Trees start at $44, smell – priceless
I don’t know that we’d do this every year – but it was definitely a lovely thing to walk through all the trees and choose a favorite (which is much harder than you think as they are all quite lovely).
We arrived around midday on a Sunday and the car park was bedlam, as was the gift shop you needed to walk through to get to the tractor ride – although in hindsight you could entirely skip the gift shop and just enter where the tree payment window is… and unless you are after Christmas decorations it’s possibly wiser to avoid the shop, especially if you have small people with you who like to touch everything (and want to buy everything).
A couple of tractors are set up to ferry tree pickers to the plots that are ready for harvest. You are given a measuring stick (so you can work out what a tree costs) and then when you are ready you turn your stick upside down and one of the many guys armed with chain-saws appears and lops your tree down. Our tractor ride was more of a joy ride as we ended up back only 50m away from where we hopped on, so rather than wait for a return ride we just carried our tree back to the office and paid.
And while dad was securing our lovely tree to the roof of the car the kids and I went to check out the playground (which required another trip through the shop and cafe to get to!). Santa was out near the playground and he was asking all the children what they wanted for Christmas and also handing out decorations for their trees – so that was quite lovely.
The cafe attached to the shop sells fairly simple cafe food such as hot chips and toasted sandwiches.
