Australia Day? Who knew? We were also embarrassed to realize that not only did we not know the words to the Australian national anthem, but we could not even hum the tune. Oh, so much to learn!
Australia Day is the anniversary of the founding of the country, much like our Fourth of July (and weather is similar with temps today in the high 90s!). I asked people what happened on the day, and most shrugged and said that they were debating whether to stretch the holiday (which fell this year on a Wednesday) into a five-day holiday by taking Monday-Tuesday off, or going the other way and taking Thurs-Fri. Otherwise it is a day to barbeque with family and friends. Since we are in relative short supply of both at the moment, we looked to see if there were public shindigs going on and Canberra did not disappoint. The night before there was the announcement of the Australians of the Year followed by a concert featuring your favorite and mine (not!), the Wiggles!! Plus some other acts I had not heard of. We gave that a miss in favor of catching the Aussie Open on TV, but went in for the "Australia Day Breakfast" held in one of the many local parks. Sausage on bread (quite tasty, actually, more mild than brats which hit all the right notes at 8:15am) and a good assortment of fruit. That plus some instant coffee (plus a free edition of the Canberra Times for Dan) and we enjoyed sitting on a lawn listening to some city choir. Here are some pictures of the grilling efforts put on for the morning feed of several thousand folks who came out before 10:30am...
See all that bread??
Anyway, while we were in line for sassies, I believe they were called, we heard a lot of racket in the trees above us, which I initially assumed were birds, but when we looked up, to our collective amazement, there were multitudes of bats in the trees above our heads! No one else but us seemed surprized by this, so I guess chalk another "tourist" moment up to us ignorant Americans!!
After the morning at the park, we went for a bike ride around the city and stopped at yonder gelato shop for the first of many ice-creams we had promised Mika could have in honor of the holiday. Some wise people back in the US who have had kids with them in these big transitions said that creating family traditions was important. Upon consultation on what traditions she wanted to see while Down Under, Mika said she wanted an ice cream day, so for us, Australia Day will also be known by that name as well!! Anyway, in honor of the holiday, the local gelato shop actually manufactured Vegemite gelato, which of course everyone had to try, even though even Vegemite-loving Australians could be heard to mutter, "that's just WRONG." I will say, having tried the real deal, the ice cream was not awful (thanks, Vegemite, for lowering my expectations so far down!) but probably not worth an actual purchase.
Mika and I rounded out the day (did I mention how bloody hot it was? : ) I am a wimp in anything but dry heat, I guess!) with a dip in our local public pool. Very very family oriented here in Canberra with almost all families out and about with lots of kids. Compared to how pools are supervised in the US, it felt a little chaotic, but yet people--adults and kids alike--seemed to supervise themselves just fine. It was lovely to take a dip--even lovelier knowing that 2 weeks ago we were freezing our patooties off!
Cheers for now (and though it says the post was by Dan, I think most of you will recognise Kirsten's much less succinct style!!)...
P.S. Dan is loving the thai panang--self-satisfied evidence above!!
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