Australia Day 2026

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror -

  The wide brown land for me!

                                                                     -Dorothea Mackellar

The day celebrates the formation of modern Australia when the British landed in what is known now as Sydney Harbour to establish a penal colony in 1788.
It’s a day of some controversy with aboriginal people calling it Invasion Day.
They had been here at least 40,000 maybe 60,000 years.
This somewhat divides the country and there’s always a discussion about alternative dates.
We don’t participate in any related activities in deference.
We are just happy to live in a country far removed from all the crap going on elsewhere in the world especially in North America and Europe.