Australia Day 2010

G'Day,
Today is Australia Day. So.... I am sitting here a drinking a plunger pot of Irish breakfast tea, on my Aussie kangaroo chairs which were made in Yugoslavia. Typing on my Japanese computer with carpet under my feet from god knows where. Listening to sulphur crested cockatoos wheeling around the sky squarking raucously.
My latest obsession seems to be Tea. I counted up the ones in my pantry the other day and there is 15 different types of tea hoarded up in there. I rarely drink coffee, I like it but a few years ago it started to upset my tummy so I switched back to tea drinking. I have Lipton's, rose chai, Turkish apple, Irish breakfast, afternoon, evening and morning tea mixtures, red green pretty, arctic fire, Buddhas tears, lychee china black tea which is my favorite, earl grey, lady grey, cranberry raspberry and strawberry mixture, billy tea, blue mountain tea, Australian breakfast tea. Oh that's 17. Wanna come over for a cuppa? No bikkies or cake I am trying to be a good girl again.
Anyway.... my point for today, Australia Day, is "we all come from somewhere". That makes us each individual and special in our own way doesn't it.
My heritage mix is English, Scottish, Welsh and a little bit of Australian aboriginal thrown in for good measure. I am proud to be Australian. Sixth generation and beyond. Convict stock on my English side. Not first fleet but coming later, in the cleansing that happened in those days, getting rid of the crims and poor people that were not wanted. I wish I knew more of that story. I could research but they all want me to pay, so that must be the Scots blood coming to the fore there, hehehe. Tough people the Scots. They were my maternal grandma's parents. They migrated to here on a ship and hopped off in South Australia. My grandma was born in Mount Gambier. We used to call her Mama. My paternal grandparents came from Wales and England, I don't know much of their story. My uncle said they didn't like us much because we were protestants they were catholic.
My paternal grand parents were from England. My convict ancestor came from that side, one of his sons was an indentured servant on a property in N.S.W. called Pullabooka which is near Grenfell, he had a aboriginal wife, her name was Elizabeth. If you have been reading my blog for a while you will remember me talking about her before. She was my great great grandmother. The families in those days were huge. I heard one of the Palmers had 17 children but I can't remember if it was Elizabeth's or the next generation. They eventually settled around the Hunter Valley area. So god knows who I am related to. It isn't an uncommon name.
So....................... why do we have so many prejudices? I know it happens all around the world. It seems to be the newest comers that cop it. In my early years it was the southern Europeans who took the flack, wogs. Then it became the Asians,wops, now it seems to be the Muslims, hanky heads. Everybody picks on the abbos, Australia's original people, but even they came from somewhere, a long long time ago. The way I see it is, they came here to get a better life. What they endured to make them want to come here must have been bad, and they saw this as a better place. We should be pleased that that they saw Australia that way. They are derided because they are different to our culture. But in a generation or two they will all be Aussies and have assimilated to our culture plus added their flavors to the mix. Surely that isn't a bad thing is it? By that time there will be another ethnic mix to pick on for their differences.
Remember that old song "Melting Pot"? The definitive words being;

What we need is a great big melting pot
Big enough to take the world and all its got
Keep it burning for a hundred years or more
Turn out multi colored people by the score.

There is something to be said for ethnic purity, but Australia is a great big melting pot.
So is England and Europe and the Americas. and Asia and so on......
Happy Australia Day.
Bye
Love Linda.