Yeah, thanks to your cricketers, the game had almost finished by the time I got home from work.
I hope your guys get it together, for their sake.
As is traditional I listened to much of JJJ’s Hottest 100 broadcast.
One Crowded Hour was the first number one that I have liked since Queens of the Stone Age’s **No One Knows ** in 2002 so that was nice.
You edited, and still left that lemon in place?
Hey, we can’t play cricket worth a heap of roo shit, but we can still nitpick spelling.
This here’s the wattle,
the emblem of our land.
You can stick it in a bottle,
you can hold it in your hand.
Don’t want to get too soppy now, do we?
(Place I found this said it was from Monty Python. I always thought it was Pam Ayres 
)
Or the poem that SHOULD have become our national anthem if there were any justice
Oh, all right. Here.
Mame Thank you for reminding me of My Country. We had to recite that poem and sing The Song of Australia many a time back in Primary School. I doubt if my kids have even heard of these two, more’s the pity.
I had never heard of Australia Day until I noticed that it’s indicated on today’s Far Side Page-a-Day calendar. I suspected the SDMB may take note of it, and wasn’t disappointed.
So there’s a big celebration over the day the first convicts landed? You guys are a whimsical lot.
So you made me Google…
Drop bears = Carnivorous Ozzie Jackelopes minus antlers
Hokay.
It’s actually quite a divisive celebration, though not as much now as ten or twenty years ago for some reason. The Aborigines call it “Invasion Day”. The language might be a bit over the top, but I can see their point. Most Australians tend to just view it as a day off - the fact that it’s in summer is a bonus. Anzac Day tends to be more emotional.
Some Native Americans here say something similar about our Thanksgiving.
Yhey’ve given us a few so far. 
Even celebration of our own Waitangi Day is far from unblemished, or cut-and-dried. Never seems like something that’s easy to solve. I’m all for remembering the past – but I also think that we need to look to the present and the future as well.
Oh, and just to add – 26 January is worthy of note even here in NZ, historically. Without the settlement of Sydney and the later creation of the colony of New South Wales, European settlement and colonisation of my own country probably would not have happened when it did. All part of the great interconnection of history. 
I wish NZ had a decent national holiday. Waitangi Day is a bit too emotionally charged. I guess that’s inevitable in any country with an indigenous population.
I agree. I always think it’s sad we can’t have something that celebrates who we all are here. Might be one of the reasons why patriotism isn’t as rampant in NZ as it is in Australia, though. We have Kiwiana stuff, and that’s about it.
The effect of ANZAC Day is quite good, but the specifics of it don’t really fit for a national day (for one, it’s a day for two nations rather than one.)