*AUSTRALIA DAY !

To-day I re-post with some minor amendment, some thoughts on AUSTRALIA DAY which I posted last year. Since our readers come from many corners of the globe , it seems appropriate that they should know something about the Country that has nurtured this Blogger, the product of Irish, German and English ancestry, and his feelings and beliefs about it.

AUSTRALIA

"CORE OF MY HEART, MY COUNTRY"

To-day is Australia Day! I thank God for bringing me to Conception and Birth in this remarkable Country.

Not the most beautiful country in the world, not the strongest country in the world, not the leading country in the world. You can have all that.

My Country is a place of real freedom, of real peace, of frank and trustworthy folk, whose friendship isn't feigned. An open, generally trusting people who are nevertheless not too easily fooled. They abhor pretension and if they have a fault it is a desire to ensure that no-one rises too high - it is called the "tall poppy syndrome" - tall poppies get cut down to size!

AUSTRALIANS GATHERED AT ANZAC COVE GALLIPOLI  -   LEST WE FORGET

Australians are a pragmatic people, no doubt a product of the sometimes harsh extremes of weather, and the lack of almost everything except land in early colonial days. As a result public discourse is not big on principles, but more on what will work. Our political system and legal system are born out of our English colonial origins. Our independence was sought and given, rather than fought for and won. We remain a constitutional monarchy, with the British Monarch's Governor - General (appointed on the recommendation of our democratically elected Government) as our Head of State, but our pragmatic nature makes the majority of Australians see that we are really and factually independent and advocates of a Republic have been unable to gain traction. The system works, the pragmatists don't need to fix it.

AUSTRALIAN ICONS

Politically, we are fairly evenly divided between political Conservatives and a Labor based group. The latter have a fragile balance of power in the Federal sphere at present, but seem certain to be rolled out of office at the next election. There is an underlying small "c" conservatism in the Australian psyche, which, combined with pragmatism, kills off such ideas as a Republic, identity cards, or anything that excites modern radicals.

One of the best summaries of Australia, the land, is contained in Dorothea Mackellar's 1904 poem "My Country”. It is a fine piece of work, addressed to many of the British citizens of Australia who, at the time it was written, would still speak of "home" and mean England! So it begins:

"The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes,

Of ordered woods and gardens,

Is running in your veins.......................

I know, but cannot share it,

My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains............

Her beauty and her terror,

The wide brown land for me!

AYERS ROCK

An opal - hearted country,

A willful lavish land -

All you who have not loved her,

You will not understand,

Though Earth holds many splendors,

Wherever I may die,

I know to what brown country

My homing thoughts will fly!

AMEN to that!

Yet another lady, this time English - born Caroline Carleton, wrote in 1859 the Song of Australia which was set to music by the German Carl Linger. It won a competition sponsored by the South Australian Gawler Institute, for a patriotic song. It also has things to say, which merit attention, despite some of the flourishes of its time. It begins:

"There is a land where summer skies

  Are gleaming with a thousand dyes,

  Blending in witching harmonies, in harmonies;

  And grassy knoll, and forest height,

  Are flushing in the rosy light,

  And all above in azure bright-

  Australia!

BOUNTEOUS CROP IN WAKE OF DROUGHT BREAKING RAIN

........

  On hill and plain the clust'ring vine

  Is gushing out with purple wine,

  And cups are quaffed to thee and thine-

  Australia!                

  .........

  There is a land, where floating free,

  From mountain top to girdling sea,

  A proud flag waves exultingly,

  And freedom’s sons the banner bear,

  No shackled slave can breathe the air,

   Fairest of Britain's daughters fair,

   Australia!

I love it!  - Australia, Yes - But the Song of Australia too! Oh, I know it's more than a little over the top! But it has the spirit of my country. And any lady who can write about "gushing out with purple wine and cups are quaffed to thee and thine" has got my vote!

There is another patriotic song by Father Maurice Reilly C.M. Which is more subtle and substantive, which I also love, and which I first heard in First Class at my Convent School in 1946:

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL HYMN

God bless our lovely morning land!

God keep her with enfolding hand

Close to His side.

While booms the distant battle's roar

From out some rude, barbaric shore.

In blessed peace forever more,

There to abide.

............

Land of the dawning! Lo! At last,

The shadows of the night are past;

Across the sea,

Is spreading far the purple light,

The lonely mountain peaks are bright,

And visions crowd upon the sight,

Of days to be.

"THE WARM OF HEART AND STOUT OF HAND"
CREW OF HMAS PERTH - LOST IN THE BATTLE OF SUNDA STRAIT
DEFENDING AUSTRALIA FROM THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN

The future is thine own, loved land,

The warm of heart, the stout of hand,

The noble mind,

Shall build a Nation truly great,

With Christ for King; where love not hate,

Shall be the charter of the State

To all mankind.

There is much more, all warm with faith in God and belief in Australia's promise.

PATRONISING  ENGLISH VIEW AT THE TIME OF FEDERATION !
THE AUSTRALIAN COMMENTS MIGHT HAVE SURPRISED THE CARTOONIST AND EDITOR

In fact, at the time of Federation there was a widespread confidence in Australia's unique character and mission to show the world a new way of true freedom and peace and justice for all. It was a heady idealism, which sadly seemed to be overwhelmed by the tragedy of the First World War, the Great Depression, and the crusade of the Second World War. It still survives in wisps of spirit which are caught here and there. But is largely lost to the national consciousness.

Let's not get too analytical - it is a day for Fair Dinkum CELEBRATION. With a very great deal to celebrate! We can save the “cerebration" for another day!

And so off to a Movie with my dear wife - “AUSTRALIA!” as Caroline Carleton would have exclaimed.

ZEROING IN - 1955 and 1956

It seems that the protracted cold referred to in my last post in July, last year(!!) froze my processes of recollection! In the last few days, a blast of heat reminiscent of my childhood years in 1944 and 1945, has however administered a jolt to the memory and summoned up the will ( it has also started the alleged "Global Warming" fanatics lifting their heads out of the long grass) .

So where was I , before I froze? Doesn't matter - I choose to resume by peering back to 1955 and 1956, come with me and see the cast of student characters assembled at Marist Brothers' Darlinghurst that was.

Marist Brothers Darlinghurst which was soon to be converted into expensive Apartments and a Town House

1955 4TH YEAR CLASS
ZEROING IN 1955 - MY BEST FRIEND AND FUTURE BROTHER-IN - LAW TONY HANNON EXTREME LEFT BACK ROW 

ZEROING IN 1956 TONY HAS MOVED TO THE RIGHT A LITTLE IN THE BACK ROW, WHILST YOUR SCRIBE HAS MOVED DOWN TO THE FOURTH ROW DOWN THIRD FROM THE RIGHT - AND HAS OBVIOUSLY BEEN WATCHING TOO MUCH LENI RIEFENSTAHL!

The photos above are now 57 and 56 years old respectively. It is interesting that what they do in my mind is summon up a series of brief thumb-nail sketches of a remarkably diverse range of rapidly forming personalities.  I can't share them all in full and one or two might be deemed libelous in any case, so I shall confine myself to a very few.

 It needs to be borne in mind, that the majority of the Class were longtime students of "Darlo"as it was affectionately known, but in the year I transferred in on my own, a group of boys from Marist Brothers Bondi, which had closed in an Archdiocesan Schools rationalisation, came to Darlo. I think about 10 of them were in our class, including Tony Hannon (now my Brother-in-Law). Tony and I  shared many interests in common, but especially History and movies and Goon Show humour. We frequently went to the movies together and bushwalking, and in later years each had a bewildering succession of cameras and cars. Zany humor was the order of the day and the Goon Show was the ideal grist for our mental mills. Here was a friendship that was to last through the decades and I would anytime trust my life to Tony.

I guess I was rather reserved with most people in those days , so I did not form close friendships with  students other than Tony - living 12-14 miles away to the West didn't help in that regard. I was always coming from, or going to, a different place to everyone else.

 I got to know a little and to like, the irrepressible Roger Constable, an engaging fellow, who delighted in projecting himself as a daring sort of rogue. He was a good guy with no harm in him that I saw. We ended up together in both Class Photographs above( he standing to my right as we look at the photo) and in 1955 the slight inclination of the head and my slightly contorted mouth show that he had just muttered one of his gags and I was trying to repress a laugh. By 1956 my Leni Riefenstahl training had overcome any such risk!

Considering the diverse make-up of Australian society to-day we can see  a very few indications of what was developing. The few Chinese students were affable fellows, super whizzes at Maths. The last of their number to arrive spoke almost no English and certainly had a very hard time as he began his 4^th and 5^th Year Studies!!He was very popular because of the way in which he struggled on in the face of this impossible adversity, and was always treated kindly in a jocular fashion becoming known as “ Curly” in that perverse type of Aussie humor!

An interesting phenomenon which I only realise now, as I write, was the fact that the subjects we took and the formal activities we engaged in, began to determine the possibilities of forming friendships, much more so than in earlier years of schooling. Thus school began to provide a foretaste of life in tertiary institutions and, indeed, life itself.

As I look on the photos now, I see those who went on to become a Solicitor – mover and shaker, a Barrister, a Doctor, a Dentist, several Teachers, and a briefly famous Merchant Banker. Strangely enough in all my years since school, apart from Tony Hannon for obvious reasons, I have only ever met two of those former fellow students. Considering the variety of circles in which I have moved, in The Commonwealth Bank, in the French Bank, in the Australian – American Association, in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve and in the Church in various places, that seems to me to be very unusual, and quite surprising.  But out of all of us, as far as I am aware, there was not one Priest, though I know at least 5 had considered the possibility, and I was briefly in the Minor Seminary in 1956. I often wonder what became of them all.

All too soon real life was to take us “cogs” up in its gearbox, and schooldays and their concerns and joys and pains would swiftly disappear in the rear vision mirror, as life moved into Top Gear whirring us away all over the place.