Ours was great! It was a very special Australia day, as previously mentioned, it was Charlotte's first Australia day. We are proud Australians and love getting out and celebrating Australia day.
Here is some photos of our fun day!
Every Australia day I like to take a moment to think about how lucky I am to live in this Country.
To me, being an Australian is being mates with everyone and harbouring no ill - towards others no matter where they are from. It's living in peace and harmony and being free and independent. It's helping out a mate when s/he needs you and above all its treating everyone fairly and with respect.
And this has recently been displayed by our nations generosity by donating and helping out a new mate or an old mate with the devastation of the Queensland Floods. In alot of other countries, there would of been alot of violence, not Australia.
The most important aspect of being Australia in the fact that our nation grew from peace, not war, aside from the invasion of the indigenous people by the English. Australia has managed to prosper and grow with out civil war. I also think the greatest achievement Australia has ever made was when our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (love him!) stood up and said 'sorry' to the stolen generation. It really was a changing day in our country.
Lastly, I would like to share a poem with you all. This poem to me is Australia. There truely is no other poem in my eyes that describes our country as best as this.
This poem is also a poem that I had to learn off by heart in Grade 3. Back then I really didn't understand the poem, and it's meaning. Today, I still know this poem word for word and now I do unstand it's meaning, what i
My Country
by Dorothea Mackellar
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!
A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
Seriously, how descriptively true is this beautiful poem that Dorothy wrote back in 1904. As a proud Australian with an immense love of my land down under, I think we must always be resiliently and accept the adversities of nature which we experience as well as the splendid beauty. Bless each and every Aussie currently battling the horrendous floods that are affecting three States now, as well as the western side of the country fighting fires. United we will always be as Australians to overcome the crazy the weather.
