Thursday, January 26, 2012

B is for Bonza! Happy Australia Day






Yes, it is that marvellous day in the oztraylian calendar when we don our flags over our boardies, slide on the thongs (ahem, not the underwear kind), cool the beers, roll the lamingtons in desiccated coconut and light the barbie to grill our lamb.

It's Australia Day!

We are sitting here by the beach, listening to the fabricky flap of our many flags tied to our verandah, and feeling the thump as some young twits play doof doof music down in the wharf's carpark, wearing nothing but their togs, sunglasses and the occasional Australian flag beach towel.

Tomorrow, there will be sunburn on hangovers on scorched feet soles.

But today, we celebrate!

I'm about to whip up a pav, and the kids are making their annual Australia Day Australian paper cup stack. (Faith, left, Love, right)








Check also, the Aussie flag temp tatts. We're completely awesome.

Every year on this day, I'm reminded of a poem. It's a piece of iconic national verse. Even though very few people know it all, EVERYONE over the age of fifteen knows the first line of the second verse:


My Country by Dorothea Mackellar - 1885-1968, written in 1904

'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.'


So, wherever you may be, enjoy your Australia Day--it's BONZA!

Em. Xx

2 comments:

  1. Happy Australia Day to you too. Glad you had fun. I went to the beach too, AND had pav. A great way to spend the day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Eleni! Gotta say, my first attempt at a pav was rock-tacular. Even the lamingtons were pretty awesome. Cant wait until OZ Day next year. :)

    It's cold and rainy back home. I miss the beach.

    See you soon, Em x

    ReplyDelete

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