Nope, no way are Anzac bickies just for Anzac Day.
Absolutely! You can scoff them any time.
Oh my. I’ve just found what my husband will be getting me for my birthday.
Cheesemaking!
Please post an update after you go! I’d quite like to do some cheesemaking classes too, but since I’m not particularly adept in the kitchen I’d rather hear from someone else first about how hard it was. 
well, you know, Fishwick ACT is known for TWO things 
I second that. I want to know what sort of cheese you make and wether you get to take it home. It’s done in ten minutes, right?
Will do! They mention 2 cheeses, rennet set and acid-set. Acid-set would probably turn out something like a paneer. Don’t know about the rennet set cheese, but it looks like you can take them both home. And they sell stuff in their store as well to make cheeses at home, like mould spores and rennet… 2 months until my b’day and I’m already excited. And he hasn’t even booked it for me yet 
People I know on another forum have waxed eloquent about their mail order service and how easy it was to use and the goodness of the cheese.
I’m eyeing up ordering some. The classes look really good but the travel makes it ridiculous for me.
Really? Has American TV been lying to me? I got the impression that the 4th of July weekend was for weekends away with family, barbecuing, enjoying the balmy evening air and so on, all things I associate with Australia Day here. I didn’t realise there were parades and stuff.
I’m sure that if there weren’t so many restrictions of fireworks purchase in Australia there would be more firework displays. I guess for a lot of town budgets Australia Day is just too soon after New Year to do more fireworks.
Oh, and addressing the fireworks question - it’s common for fireworks to be purchased in the ACT and smuggled to other states - quite a few small ones were set off in my neighbourhood over the Christmas/New Year period, scaring my dog. And there’s no restrictions on sparkler purchase, you can buy them at supermarkets, quickie marts and dollar stores.
I don’t know about every town, but certainly parades are very very common. Here, there’s a sort of celebration at the park, with a pancake breakfast, several speakers, and a program of music performed by a volunteer orchestra. You always need lots of music on the 4th of July–marches and patriotic tunes and so forth. (“Be kind to your web-footed friends” is a must-have, and “I’m a Yankee Doodle dandy,” etc.) And a town fireworks display, probably with a special baseball game beforehand. And speeches.* Plus everyone buys a bunch of fireworks (if possible**) and sets them off. There’s definitely a lot of family BBQing going on, but there’s also a lot of community stuff.
I think the 4th must be a good bit larger than Australia Day. It’s a fairly important holiday.
*This one time my church congregation had a pancake breakfast in the park on the 4th, and the mayor was invited to speak, and he decided to trash the stinking liberals instead of giving the expected speech on our rights and freedoms and remembering the Founding Fathers etc.–boy, that went over like a lead balloon.
**In California, several counties (including mine) have banned the sale of personal fireworks, largely due to fire danger–we have wildfire problems similar to Australia’s. So quite often we’ll head down to Sacramento to stay with my BIL’s family and buy lots of fireworks there.
I think it’s just that we (as a nation) are just not all that gung-ho in terms of patriotism.
We tend to look a little askance at people putting flags in their gardens or on their houses (“What? You forget what country you’re in if you’re not reminded?”) and any citizen found to be Behaving in a Suspiciously Patriotic Manner would probably be brought in out of the sun and placed under an airconditioner until they could recapture the proper state of slightly bored nonchalance.
But we do like sparklers, and things that go ‘boom’ in pretty colours in the sky. We just have to be careful to resist the urge to go ‘squee!’ or look excited, lest we be accused of un-Australianism. 
Boy, that’s not much fun. Flags are cheery. They brighten the place up! Go spend a summer in Denmark, you’ll see what I mean.
Part of the problem is that the Australian flag is controversial, since it’s about 90% a British flag (the blue ensign) with some stars added. So some people see it as a relic of colonial times. Unfortunately, no one can agree on what should replace it – and of course a significant number want to retain it.
Actually, i beg to differ. I think it’s just that Australian gung-ho patriotism tends to manifest in somewhat different ways than American.
You’re right that far fewer Australians set the national flag outside their houses, but i think Giles’s explanation at least partly covers that. Patriotism is, it seems to me, still a core part of Australian culture, and something that is often trotted out in order to push particular agenda or bludgeon different viewpoints. Terms like The Lucky Country," used unironically by so many Australians, reinforce pride and self-satisfaction in the nation. The frequent use of the term “un-Australian” to describe people and ideas and practices that don’t conform to mainstream expectations.
It seems to me that one key area where Australian and American patriotism differs is in the amount of confidence attached. American patriots KNOW they live in the greatest place on earth; Australian patriots aren’t so sure. So you end up with the paradox whereby Australia is a fiercely patriotic place, but also has a sort of cultural inferiority complex, a “cultural cringe” that manifests itself as a constant desire to prove just how good Australia is. Australian patriots constantly worry that the rest of the world doesn’t realize how awesome Aussies and Australia really are, so any time an Australian person or invention or whatever makes it on the world stage, the media and other Aussie patriots point frantically and yell “See, look how successful we Aussies are,” just in case anyone missed it. It’s sort of sad.
I say this all with love. I grew up in Australia, still have family and many friends there, and i think it is a fantastic place to live. But it certainly has its share of unreflective nationalists.