Ice cream dreams win top spot

Left to right in front row: Anna Penny (age nine) finalist, Thomas Busby (age nine) overall winner, and Hira Harris (age nine) finalist, from Raumati South School.

For Thomas Busby, all his Christmases came at once. The football-mad nine-year-old from Raumati earned the spot next to Santa in the Tip Top Santa Parade in Wellington, which also celebrated the All-Whites’ historic football victory.

In a competition among Wellington’s children to design an ice cream ‘as magical as Christmas’, Thomas Busby from Raumati South School took out the big prize – the seat next to Santa – with his goody goody gum drops creation complete with fresh strawberries, mint Christmas trees, chocolate flakes and a layer of edible gold.

The judges at Tip Top were impressed by the creativity of the hundreds of children who entered – there were sprinkles of jandal-shaped jubes, raspberry pohutukawa flowers, a chocolate gumboot, marshmallow fish and chips, a pink snowman, a Christmas stocking-shaped cone, and a Santa-like Sir Edmund Hillary at the peak of an ice cream mountain.