It's Australia Day

Hey Guys,
This is my special Australia Day post, because just in case you didn't realise. I AM AUSTRALIAN! And guess what, I'm proud of it!  I love Australia, everything about it. I love the drouts, I love the floods, I love the fires, I love the support and enthusiam Aussies have for Aussies. I love the support and enthusiasm Aussies have for the world.
I wear my thongs on my feet, with my singlet and shorts. I eat vegimite sandwiches, and meat pies with sauce. But I never ever drink Fosters. Aussies DON'T drink Fosters. I wear jumpers not pullovers, and tracky daks not sweats, and I'm really sorry but your fanny is not your bum. I love Aussie music Aussie movies and Aussie books. Yeah!!!
I don't love the fact that Aussies are branded racists for stupid things, like waving the Australian flag, like wanting to celebrate Xmas in our schools, like expecting people who want to immigrate to our country to do so via the legal channels, not just rock up in a boat and expect us to lay out the welcome mat. We have of lots of beautiful open space, our own resources and a huge hearts.
I love our native Flora and Fauna, I mean who doesn't love Kangaroos and Koala bears, but I even love Crocodiles, Brown snakes and Red back Spiders, (preferably not in my linen cupboard though. i love camping and bushwalking and the great outdoors.
Yes we are a land of hardship and extremes, a few years ago we had extreme bushfires, killing hundreds of people and destroying entire towns. Last year we had flooding and cyclones killing and destroying, and everytime as Aussies we ralley together and help out. it's just what we do, so let's not ever change that.
This post doesn't mean anything at all, It's just a chance for me to express a bit of Aussie pride on Australia Day, something that is only just starting to gain acceptace and become the norm in Australia, for far too long it has been considered a shame to show pride in Australia and I'm so glad that trend is changing.
I want to share with everyone this poem

My Country, by Dorothy McKellar, It was written in 1904 when she was 19 years old and epitomises all that is Australian. The second verse is actually the most famous and I know it by heart.

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.

Gillian