Happy Australia Day!

Another January almost gone... can you believe that!? I am amazed at just how quickly this year is already going. Today is Australia Day. A day to celebrate our country and all it means to us. I am thankful for this wonderful country and the freedom we have within it. I am thankful for the freedom to worship and serve my Lord, as some countries do not have that freedom. 

When i think of my home, i still think of the famous poem by Dorothea MacKellar. I post it every Australia Day, because in my heart, that is how i feel about this country. We have so much to be grateful for in this country. So much to thank God for. We are (hopefully) going to spend the day with some friends. I say hopefully because this morning we went to get in our car, and some smart person (guess who!? :-) left the interior light on since we got to our Apartment in Sydney (we are on a work trip for my husband at the moment) and our car battery is flat. The drive to our friends house is about an hour, and we were suppose to be there at 10:30. Which is now.... so instead of being there, i am sitting here typing a blog post. Bummer. This stinks. Oh well, maybe one day i will grow a brain!!! :-) Never mind, i guess these things happen when stupid people are around. :-) So hopefully we will get there eventually!!!!! 

I hope you all enjoy your Australia Day, my Australian friends. :) Have a great day to everyone else too!

HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY! :-) Enjoy spending the day with family and friends and celebrating everything this great country means to you and your family.

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!

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.

Hugs,