Australia Day
To me this poem (below) has always captured the meaning of 'our land'. ..... since we have several new Australians in our circle of Team members I thought I'd include it.
My Country. D McKellar
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.
That's Oz for me.
Nights under the limitless stars.
Days searching the horizon -
no other humans as far as eye can see
Today we swim at the lake .... Then BBQ
Mid afternoon:
The lake was a big success ... we'd packed for a mini BBQ at the lake and this was well received by Kaylia ... sausages, chips and drink.
Now we're home ... using our holiday for a bit of house tidying.
.... and a 'goose story' ..... the airconditioner in the dining room hasn't been working for about a year and we've been meaning to get it repaired. I thought I'd read the manual. It said "....put new batteries in the remote, set the time on the remote ..." I did this and .... lo and behold ... it works! What a goose am I! A year of procrastinating .... and all it took to fix it was 2 batteries.
Er, yeah, good laugh! I'd never fall for that, would I?
ReplyDeleteI'd better say it in public: a couple of years ago, I couldn't get my aircon to work either. I hadn't used it for a while, so I was wondering about a service call, like you.
Then I realised - it was still set to Heat mode from the winter! Switch to Cool, and it was cool... duh.