Reindeer rocking Christmas in Queensland

There was no police car arrival for the jolly red man in the suit this time - Santa arrived in a sleigh pulled by two reindeer, much to the excitement of the crowd gathered at the local football oval.

Red deer stags Rocky and Radar belong to Warwick's Graham Reimers, who has been travelling the east coast of Australia delighting young and old alike with his reindeers for the past 34 years.

It's a hectic schedule packed into two months of the year - the morning after their appearance at Tara, the pair were enchanting over 1000 people at an Ipswich shopping centre, before appearing at the Sandstone Point Hotel at Bribie Island later that afternoon.

On Monday their routine included a daycare centre in Toowoomba, followed by an afternoon in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall.

Mr Reimers said that in his experience, nothing brought a smile to a person's face more than getting up close to the gentle creatures with an enormous spread of horns, just like something they'd seen only in a movie.

"When I first started, I thought I was doing this for the kids," he said. "I couldn't have been more wrong."

He started by accident, needing a career change from being a DPI vet and then a journalist.

"I saw how well received animal farms were, and thought I could give that a go," he said. "A shopping centre manager put the idea of reindeer at Christmas in my mind."

His first chital deer was called Gambler and others scoffed when he said he was going to break him into a sleigh, saying it couldn't be done.

Eighteen months later, not only was it done but Mr Reimers was learning to call five stags up a moving escalator, all by voice command.

At its peak he was operating six teams of six but insurance jitters limited him to one team, which he says he now prefers.

Mr Reimers is the only person in Australia licensed to do the work he does with his reindeer, under the NSW Exhibited Animals Protection Act, and says he is often attacked by activists wanting to release his animals into a snowy environment.

"They're of German origin but more than 20 generations Australian bred so they're used to the heat," he said. "Take them to the snow and they'd probably die."

When he bred reindeer, he selected first for temperament and then for their head, given that they would be mixing with large crowds so often.

His fauns spent the first month of their life inside the family home, where his youngest children Georgia and Connor played with them on the couch, painted their toes, played loud music, ran through the house, and generally gave them a great grounding.

Mr Reimers said that was why they were so calm around people, adding that they'd performed some extraordinary feats, such as getting their horns through 40 separate doorways of a nursing home to lay their heads on the laps of residents for a pat.

"They never pulled out a tube - they are very smart animals," he said.

They also love taking part in parades and to march along to the beat of a big pipe band.

Mr Reimers recalled one time when Christmas carols were being played at double tempo.

"I had to call ahead and get them to go back to a slower beat, or they were going to get mown down by enthusiastic reindeer," he laughed.

For eight months of the year, during the rutting season, they are left totally alone in their paddock, where they roar and fight, day and night.

Their antlers are cut three weeks after they shed their velvet, and they grow back in 100 days.

One set of antler horns will sell for around $1000, Mr Reimers said.

As to why he continues doing it, he said it was partly because no-one else was and partly because it was so different to the rest of his work.

"Everyone wants to do away with Christian festivals in Australia these days, but the stags are a magnet for people of every religion," he said.

"I ask people posing for a picture if they're offended by what we're doing, and not one is.

"Everyone, Muslim women wearing hijab, they all enjoy it."

He said he was enjoying the work too much to retire, but he was going to work out a succession plan with his children, to carry the tradition on through the years.