Australia Day

It's Australia's Birthday!

It's a day celebrated by many and ignored by some. I wont go into the politics of why its ignored or even protested about. I will however provide you with a link if you wish to find out some of Australia's History.
You can go HERE or HERE to find out more about this wonderful country I live in :)
I really do feel blessed to live in this place and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

Here's a great poem that I copied from Poetry.com.

My Country
by Dorothy MacKeller.

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 I cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding plains.
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 rush 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 three-fold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...

A 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.

Just about every Aussie knows the second verse. I'm thinking that it has something to do with a commercial we used to have on TV that recited it.
I do love the poem though & how it describes Australia. It makes me feel all patriotic & sentimental.
I hope you liked the poem.