Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Happy Australia Day!

Today, January 26 2011, marks 110 years since the Commonwealth of Australia was officially formed.  From what we have been able to glean together from various internet sources (not always reliable but very convenient) Australia has been inhabited by Aborigine people for thousands of years but the written history of Australia goes back to the early 1600s, when Tasmania was mapped by a Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman.  Zoom ahead more than 100 years to 1770, when Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay.  In 1788 the penal colony of Sydney was established, also on January 26, and the exploration and settlement of Australia began.  In 1901 the federation of the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia formed the country that we now call home.  There are also various territories, including the Northern Territory, which was not part of the official group comprising the original commonwealth (we think). 
This Australia Day was unusual in Brisbane because of the devastation wreaked by the floods only two weeks ago.  We were told that there is normally a big celebration at Southbank and a fireworks display, but none of that was possible this year.  Southbank is still cordoned off to the public and the crews who would set up the fireworks have far more important things to do.  It is also pretty tough to budget for fireworks when there is talk of a new tax or "flood levy" that all Australians will be paying in 2011 and beyond. 
For our first Australia Day we decided to walk to the CBD for lunch and then head to the greyhound races!  When we sat down in the pub for lunch we asked if they would mind turning on the Australian Open tennis for us, rather than a cricket match rebroadcast from 1987 and a footie match.  Not only did they turn on the tennis, they decided to show the live footage of the Montreal Canadiens-Philadelphia Flyers hockey game.  We sat in 32C heat watching live hockey...how crazy is that!
We went to the dog races for the first time ever and really enjoyed it.  We saw only young dogs new to racing and some of them were completely clueless.  They take the young dogs to the side of the track and let the "rabbit" (it's actually a rag on a stick) run around the track past them so that they know to chase it.  The races are about 300m and the dogs didn't seem too tired afterwards, so we think they had a good time too.
We know that Australians have a fantastic reputation for being friendly and caring and that was certainly seen with all the volunteering and flood relief that we have seen over the past coule of weeks.  Even with knowing that, we had some big misconceptions about Australia before we moved here.  The first one was that Australia was a totally macho society.  Not only is the Prime Minister female, three of the states have female premiers.  Not exactly the man's world we were expecting!
Our second misconception, that moving to a city of 2 million people would result in seeing more crime than we did in Calgary, was realized yesterday when we came home from work and noticed that our city-provided garbage wheelie bin was missing.  We walked around the block and couldn't see it at anyone else's place and decided that someone must have nicked it.  We thought that due to all the flood clean-up going on someone just needed it.  When we got home today, however, it was back on our driveway.  It was only borrowed, not stolen and returned a little dusty but not really any worse for wear.  Another prejudice proven wrong!

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