My Australia

Today is Australia Day, an excuse to get drunk around a barbie and eat lamb chops. Good times.

What is Australia to me?

It’s singing Waltzing Matilda at the top of your lungs with mates and eating charred lamb chops with your fingers, while the woodsmoke gets in your eyes.

It is feeding the dogs the scraps.

It is the high summers and the smell of bushfires on the wind.

It is the freezing winters and black ice on the roads.

It is letting your lawn die because there isn’t any water for frivolities.

Showers over 1 minute are a frivolity.

It is having no mobile phone coverage in my back yard.

Or broadband access either.

It was having an outside dunny when I was a kid.

And eating raspberries straight from the garden.

It is soaring petrol prices. ($1.49 per litre? I mean, really)

It is wearing the flag with pride. (Except! if that is all you are wearing, you better be extremely good looking or else I might be annoyed. Or blinded.)

It is tolerance for EVERYONE, because we are ALL immigrants except the aboriginals.

It is drought.

And flood.

It is playing in the sunshine.

And worrying about the ozone layer, as we slip, slop and slap.

It is saying Mummy, not Mommy and humour and metre and litre. Centigrade, not farenheit and kilometres, not miles.

It is making fun of songs at the top of our lungs in the car (Amy is going to be so embarrassed when she is bigger).

It is not worrying about terrorists, because hello? What good is Tassie to them anyway? Do you want our APPLE ORCHARDS? Egads! Blow up our proposed Pulp Mill? Why CERTAINLY! Half of the state will help you with that.

It is worrying about the lack of environmental protection in my beautiful state.

It is clear felling, fire bombing and poisoned animals.

This

is going to become this?

And then they will do this to finish up.

It is so sad and so scary. 90% of the logs go for woodchips. WOODCHIPS for goodness sakes. *sigh*

It is having the right to write whatever I want. And fighting for that right, because I don’t want my internet filtered at an ISP level.

It is being able to get political on my blog, even though I rarely do.

It is going off on a tangent.

And coming back. Hello there!

Being Australian is a whole bundle of things. Mostly for me, it is being who I am and believing in what I like.

Happy Australia Day. Have a beer by the barbie for me, okay? And a chop. Is lamb, is good.