Today is Queensland Day...

I was going to write about the weekend but I have something special because it is Queensland Day. June 6, 1859  is the day Queen Victoria signed the papers which meant the Moreton Bay settlement could separate from the colony of new South Wales and became a British colony called Queensland (named obviously in honour of the queen!!). Now those signed papers then were sent by sailing ship from England to Australia and arrived in time for the chief magistrate (I think) of the Moreton Bay settlement to publicly read out the details on December 10 that the colony of Qld had come into being.
Robyn Beattie is an ex-pupil of mine. I first taught her in 1974 in Year 5 and then...I got to teach her again in year 7!!! I remember Robyn as a very confident, competent, hard-working, creative and out-going student who was a delight to teach. Ivy, her grandmother, was also my neighbour and I got to know the family quite well. In 1981 we were all thrilled when Robyn's poem was published on the front page of the local newspaper. By this stage Robyn was in her final year of high school. She later trained to be a secondary teacher (lucky students who were taught by her!). Robyn now lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and is still involved with creative endeavours. Here is her poem...is it still relevant today???

It is Queensland...

It is warm

It is welcome

It is sand squeaking through my toes as i run along the beach

It is walking through the water with rubber thongs

It is putting my mouth around a succulent, sloppy mango.

It is cold Christmas dinner

It is lazily dozing on a shady verandah waiting for the never-ending daylight to end.

It is night swimming by floodlight

It is the scampering of possums over the tin roof and the villainous shrieks of flying foxes overhead

It is the anxious anticipation of the predicted cyclone

It is winter which barely arrives.

It is the Sunday drive through yellow-gold wattle.

It is the calm solitude of breaking the crystal clear lagoons of the reef.

It is walking through Surfers’ Paradise in togs.

It is singing from the top of a mountain and not being heard.

It is exploring.

It is swimming across stingray infested creeks.

It is fishing from the rocky ledges of Stradbroke.

It is being woken up in the morning by the sun.

It is the smell of ‘Coppertone’

It is the ‘Southerners’ desire

It is the ‘Northerners’ pride.

It is my home

It is Queensland.

Robyn Beattie 

(poem was published by the Suburban (North West edition) newspaper 02/09/81)

Please do not use this poem without acknowledgement of the poet