Today is Australia Day and we celebrate everything Australian.

And today I am an official Ambassador for Australia Day – an honour I gladly and whole-heartedly accept. I am truly and proudly Australian !

Today in Camden’s celebrations in the south-west of Sydney I will be giving a speech on what it means to be Australian. So I thought I’d tell you some of the things that being an Aussie means to me. No order. just thoughts on Australia Day.

Sun and beaches. Skippy the bush Kangaroo hat’s that skip … ? Jumping under the sprinkler as kids. Icypoles. Ovaltines. Voilet Crumble. Stubborn and proud people. A peaceful country. Long summer afternoons. A sunburnt country. Driza-bones. The Man from Snowy River and amazing horsemen surviving in the bush, droving, catching brumbies. Kangaroos. Koalas. Platypus. Wombats. Bilby. Emus. Crocodiles. Many venomous snakes. Sharks. Red dirt. Uluru. Beautiful black smiling faces of the traditional people of our land – the Aborigines. A young country. A country more capable than people may know (as people saw during the Sydney Olympics). great sportspeople and a strong and successful sporting heritage. A great mix between the traditions of England and the Commonwealth and the conveniences of the US, without being too much of either way. Friendly, easy going and happy go lucky people. Mateship. People like Aussies around the world. What you see is what you get. Uncomplicated people. Musk sticks and mixed lollies at the milkbar. Multi-cultural country. We hate politicians. Drought. Paul Hogan. Cricket and Aussie Rules. Surf life-saving. Farmers doing it tough yet they are in many ways the salt of the earth and the backbone of this country. The Opera House and beautitful Sydney Harbour. Fire works on New Years Eve off the Sydney Harbour bridge. The sound of lawnmovers during summer. Suntan cream and endlessly applying it. Vegemite. The boxing kangaroo. Lamingtons. Green cordial. We call them mountains but by any other countries standards they are hills. Driving a long way to the snow and hoping there is even snow. Lots of long plane trips to get anywhere. Flying in to Sydney – nothing beats that view. Amazing gorges in the the Northern Territory – waterfalls and waterholes. Swimming and splashing in waterholes and pools and dams and bores around the country. A convict heritage – of prisoners in a penal colony doing hard labour and forging a new life in an unknown hard land. The great southern land – and we like being so far away.

Ahhh – Australia. My home. Happy Australia Day