My Favourite Day of the Year

YES!

It is Australia Day tomorrow!!

I'm so excited! I absolutely LOVE Australia Day.

I will be having a sleep in, then working on my essay (no rest for the educated), then in the afternoon I'm going to go for a bike ride, then make a pavlova and some chicken dumplings (not strictly Australian, but I figure we're multicultural right?) then a couple of my friends from school and I are going to head down to the South Perth foreshore to hang, listen to the Mix 94.5 Australia Day programme, watch the BP Airshow then my favourite bit, the fireworks!!

I'm going to wear my white dress with Australian flags on it, thongs of course, and Australian flag tattoos!! I will try and remember to take many pictures to show you all my shameless patriotism.

I prefer to spend Australia Day with Australians as opposed to my copious amounts of international friends. Not that I don't love them, I see them more than I do my Australian friends, its just I don't feel like they get it in quite the same way. I don't blame them for this at all, I've been born into and indoctrinated into it my whole life, and they have a different perspective. I am intensely proud of being an Australian and all that it represents, and yes, even if that means I have a bogan accent and I drink too much and sometimes we are all a bit racist with our 'Love it or Leave it' and 'I Grew Here, You Flew Here' attitudes, but I don't think about that stuff on Australia Day. I think about how lucky I am to have grown up in a country that lets people have those sort of attitudes. Google 'why I won't be celebrating Australia Day' and plenty of articles come up spouting why we are a bunch of racist, loud-mouthed, holier-than-thou loutish bogans. Now say if that article had been written about somewhere in the Middle East, or perhaps Russia, North Korea, do you think it would be allowed to be published? Probably not. And Mr Brull would not be allowed to have his photo on the Internet, nor be allowed to say these things.

But we don't live there.

We live in Australia. We can pretty much say what we want, without fear of retribution. We have amazing weather. We have (almost) equal rights (ok, it could be a lot worse). We have a highly educated society. We have low unemployment. We managed to pretty much avoid the GFC. We have a mix of cultures, who are ALL part of making up the mesh of Australia.

In my opinion, I live in an amazing country. I love Australia. I cannot see myself living anywhere but here. For one thing, people from other countries don't tend to understand me when I talk (the bogan accent coming out and all). But I just think, I live in the luckiest country in the world. Why would I leave?

And if you don't think so, well thats ok. But I think it is. And I will celebrate Australia Day proudly. And one of the perks of living here, is that I don't get judged for this, and I won't judge you for not celebrating it.