Happy Australia Day!

I'm wearing the hair clips as promised. Pictures to follow!

Jeremy and I are sitting on our back porch, drinking cider and smelling delicious BBQ wafting over from the park. Through the trees I can see people standing at the barbecue in the park wearing their Australia Day blue, red and white outfits. Ah, patriotism. Love it! For some people though, it's not such a great day. The other name for today is "Invasion Day". Here's a little educational tidbit:

For some Australians, particularly Indigenous Australians, Australia Day has become a symbol for adverse effects of British settlement on Australia's indigenous people.[9] The celebrations in 1938 were accompanied by an Aboriginal Day of Mourning. A large gathering of Aboriginal people in Sydney in 1988 led an "Invasion Day" commemoration marking the loss of indigenous culture.

Yesterday we were invited for dinner at Wendy and Jim's. We sat outside, someone brought out a guitar and we had a great time playing and singing along. Somehow we got on the topic of national anthems, and we belted out O Canada (the bilingual version) and The Star Spangled Banner, but none of us knew the full version of the Australian national anthem. Whoops...Ah well. Jim treated us to some good old British and Irish tunes, and Jeremy and I sang the song we had our first dance to at the wedding. I had missed our nightly dinners! Always accompanied by merriment and conversation - I'm sure we'll continue seeing Wendy and Jim regularly (in fact, we're celebrating Jim's birthday this Friday!) For dessert, we had Lamington's in honour of A-Day.

Lamingtons are a sponge cake (or, more traditionally, butter cake) in the shape of a cube, coated in a layer of traditionally chocolate icing then desiccated coconut. They are sometimes served as two halves with a layer of cream and/or strawberry jam between, and are commonly found in Australiasian outlets such as coffee lounges, lunch bars, bakeries, and supermarkets.

Soon we'll be off to South Bank to participate in the festivities and watch fireworks. As I was telling Marissa yesterday, one of the events was actually cockroach racing! Just goes to show how deeply they are ingrained in the culture here!