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Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Australia Day 2017

Today, being January 26, is the public holiday here known as Australia Day. This date commemorates the date that Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet arrived here to start a British penal colony in 1788. (The Aboriginal people already lived here but that is a whole other story, as it is in other countries colonised by more powerful nations.)
There are plenty of things to do on Australia Day, and being summer here, much of these activities focus around beaches, parks, clubs and pubs. DH and I are enjoying a quiet day...not even a family barbeque this year. Our young ones, (extended family included) now they are all grown up, 'have places to go' but I must admit I've enjoyed having the chance of working on a stitching project and DH is enjoying the sport on television.
One year I wrote a post here, about Aussie sayings and our tendency to shorten words and put an 'o' on the end of that!


This year I'm posting about some trivia and a tea towel I own...and some photos of that tea towel :-)
I'll let the photos 'speak' for themselves...
Yep...it's comparing sizes of a few other countries and 2 continents with the size of Australia. Those early settlers must have been quite overwhelmed with the size of their new home after what they were used to in the UK...as would those who came out in the big migrations from Europe after WW2.



I guess the tea towel wasn't big enough to show comparative sizes of Canada, Russia and China...having flown over the latter two I would say that they are much larger than Australia. And Canada is probably a lot larger too.

DH and I will dine on a 'good old fashioned Aussie roast dinner' tonight. Sorry to any readers who are vegetarian...it will be roast lamb. Most years we have a BBQ and maybe some seafood...the typical Aussie food is varied but today I predict that a lot of lamingtons and pavlovas will be scoffed.

14 comments:

Kim said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kim said...

What I meant to say:

Funnily enough, my DH and I are having a 'good old fashioned Aussie roast dinner' tonight too.....roast lamb of course. =) My we live in a big country, don't we. Happy Australia Day to you and your DH, Maria.

angela said...

Happy Australia Day.
We had roast chicken another Aussie favourite
We also went out for brunch and then just had a nice quiet day at home
Tonight I'll have a few cold drinks and then I'll go to bed
Perfect Aussie day I think
Love the tea towel xxx

biebkriebels said...

Have a nice Australia Day, love that towel. I showes very well the sizes of the countries.

Carol- Beads and Birds said...

Australia fascinates me. I had no idea it was smaller than Canada. When you see it on the globe it appears pretty large. Did you ever read any of the James A Michner novels? I have read everyone and often wished he had written one on Australia. Sounds like you had a good day.
xx, Carol

Gail said...

Happy Australia Day! Enjoy your holiday and your roasted lamb!

Sharm said...

Amazing the size of our country ....... we have our roast every Sunday - been a tradition since Pete & I started out together 34 yrs ago,!

Jackie said...

The only country larger than Canada is Russia. We are the second largest country in the world. Mind you we probably have the smallest population out of the three largest countries.

Love the comparisons on the tea towel.

God bless.

margaret said...

so good tht you have a special day nothing like that here in the UK we do not even celebrate St George`s day. Very interesting to see the tea towel and the countries looking so small.

Dorothy said...

Interesting, fun post Maria. I scoffed a little late (today) on a Krispy Kreme Lamington donut - yummo mate !!

doodles n daydreams said...

G'day, love the slang map and the tea towel, onya mate!

Diana

Anonymous said...

Hope you enjoyed Australia Day. I too, enjoyed the slang map.

Cat Lover said...

Hope you had a great holiday!

Michelle Ridgway said...

We do live in an amazing country....yum roast lamb! We had a barbie xx