Six white boomers, snow white boomers,
racing Santa Claus through the blazing sun…
(from Six White Boomers by R Harris & J Brown)
So what is a white boomer? It is a large, male Kangaroo that has white fur. When they move fast across the dry sands of Australia, they make a booming noise so they earned the name boomers. Most boomers are not white by the way 🙂
Why boomers for Santa?
In Australia, Christmas Eve can be hot – and it certainly isn’t cold and snowy. Santa’s poor reindeer would find it very hard to pull a sleigh across the Australian skies so he gives them a rest while six large boomers pull the sleigh instead. The boomers can’t fly normally, but with Santa’s magic, anything is possible.
Rolf Harris made this story famous in the 1960s by releasing his version of six white boomers. You can see the lyrics on the all down under website* (it would be a copyright infringement if we copied the words here!) and find out the boomers’ names here.
If you are creative, you may like the instructions on painting some white boomers of your own (that resource has been removed but here is a kangaroo drawing video.) Or grab our boomer colouring in page before ordering a Love Santa letter.
* We used to link to the song composer’s personal site for the lyrics, but it has disappeared now.
PS All Love Santa letters acknowledge the work done by the Boomers to help Santa deliver gifts.
Yes, it never feels quite right to expect reindeer to fly acorss our hot skies each Christmas…
I agree Junaita – it’s a lot warmer here (even in winter!) than it is at the North Pole 🙂 The poor reinderr would have heat exhaustion very quickly – although Santa’s magic amy protect them from that, too.
I love that song – it is nice to have boomers help Santa and I love how Santa and the boomers help teh Joey get home, too, in their extra run.
painting white boomers is probably beyond my skills, lol, but the colouring page for my kids sounds like a plan in the quiet days now Christmas is over but not forgotten…