Happy Australia Day Everyone!!

Today is Australia Day, for those not playing at home, it's the day we celebrate becoming an independent nation, and reflect on what it means to be Australian. I am going to share one of my favoutite poems; it's a little sappy, but I lvoe this country, and I think I am lucky to live in the best country in the world!!

Oh, a side note: I happen to love our flag, just as it is. Men fought and died under that flag to protect our way of life. Leave it alone. Fuck off Ray Martin.

Oh, and also? If you and your redneck bogan mates want to drape yourself in said flag, using it as an excuse to go forth and spread hate, just stay home and get pissed instead. Not that you can afford to lose the brain cells of course, but I'd rather you didn't ruin everything Australia Day means to me with your stupid ignorance.

OK, I'm done. Enter 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.

Dorothea Mackellar