I am, you are, we are Australian

'We are one, but we are many, and from all the lands on earth we come. We share our dreams and sing with one voice I am, you are, we are Australian' (©Bruce Woodley 1987). It's Australia Day, the 26th January, a date that marks the first foundations of this great country, the first colonists arriving in Sydney Harbour in 1788. And I'm feeling exceptionally patriotic today. We've never had to fight for our independence, we've never had to quell civil uprisings and the poor natives we're too ill-equipped to form much resistance to occupation. But all that aside I'm proud of the what we have achieved and who we are.

This is a magnificent country, so vast that it contains deserts and salt lakes, snowy mountains and verdant river basins, tropical rainforests and islands and stunning beaches. There are places where statistically you could be the only human being within a 200km radius. The land can be harsh and hostile, after all it was no New World to the early settlers, they sent boat loads of criminals and convicts to serve out their sentences in Terra Nulis (No Man's Land). I've heard the West Australian outback termed a 'Hard Place for Hardy People'. Having lived here my whole life I tend to agree. Just look at the Eastern States at the moment, whilst 75% of the state of Queensland was declared a natural disaster zone due to the worst floods in nearly 40 years parts of Perth in were on fire. But I also know that if you are a hardy person, you work hard and play hard, if you're willing to give everything a fair go than the opportunities within this country are endless.

Get away from the cities like Sydney and Melbourne, full of tourists and yuppies who think 38ᵒC is hot, get into the real outback and you realise it's not just a gimmick. It's a place where 'she'll be right' really means it will be alright because the Australian spirit never gives up and if it ever wavers your mates will be standing there to lend a hand. Heck the Queensland Mud Army (volunteers helping to clean up after the floods) were just every day Australians helping out complete strangers because that's what we do. We may be a young country with citizens from all over the world but once here you can't help but fall in love and admit to being Australian. So before I continue to prattle even further here is a poem that sums it up very well, ask any true blue Australian and they'll agree, I love a sunburnt country! P.s The first verse refers to the mother England that many of the original settlers came from.

My Country

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!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
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 (1904)

And just because I can't help it and watching this made me tear up with pride here is a song from Oprah's recent visit to Australia.