Happy Australia Day everyone.

On January 26th 1788, a diverse group of convicts, soldiers and leaders landed at Sydney Cove to establish the colony of New South wales, the beginning of the modern state of Australia.

Despite all the propaganda of genocide and massacres of aboriginal Australians, it was a mostly peaceful affair. It was never an “invasion” by any stretch of the imagination.

The Governor of the colony was charged with developing a self-reliant settlement and maintaining as far as possible a positive relationship with the inhabitants.

Yes, terrible murders took place. There were times of terrible institutional racism, which most Australians look back at with shame. Those days have come to an end, and most people I talk to have little interest in the “race” of others. Oh yes, and after some of the most infamous cases of violence, the perpetrators were tried by white man’s justice and hanged for their crimes.

Like most modern states, our history has been coloured by the highest of aspirations and also by the worst of human sin.

Despite our imperfections, there is nowhere in the world that I would rather live. Judging by the huge number of migrants that come to live here every year, not to mention the many more who apply but are rejected by our strict immigration rules, that is a widely shared opinion.

Let’s celebrate the good things about living in this awesome nation and rejoice in the great mates we have.

Happy Australia Day!

I have a bit of an Aussie Day tradition where I post my favourite Australian poem, “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar, who actually lived near Gunnedah not too far from here.

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!

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