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.
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.
