26th January: Raising the Flag

Along with my fellow Australians,
This day I stopped to think about my Country.
I took a moment to think of what it means to me to be Australian.
I stood under our flag of the southern cross,
I am proud to call Australia home, mine.

As well as hanging our Australian flag at the front of our home. We gathered the family around, (Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Grandpa, Grandma), and attached a new flag on the old flag pole at the 'shop to be.' I felt very Australian in that moment. As this particular flag pole has not had a flag fly from it in over 20 years. Yet today, newly painted (Thank you Grandpa), it holds our flag.




Seeing it flap and crack in the wind made me think of my favourite poem by Banjo Paterson:

"Our Own Flag"

They mustered us up with a royal din,
In wearisome weeks of drought.
Ere ever the half of the crops were in,
Or the half of the sheds cut out.

'Twas down with saddle and spurs and whip;
The swagman dropped his swag.
And we hurried us off to an outbound ship
To fight for the English flag.

The English flag_ it is ours in sooth
We stand by it wrong or right.
But deep in our hearts is the honest truth
We fought for the sake of a fight.

And the English flag may flutter and wave
Where the World-wide Oceans toss,
But the flag the Australian dies to save
Is the flag of the Southern Cross.

If ever they want us to stand the brunt
Of a hard-fought, grim campaign,
We will carry our own flag up to the front
When we go to the wars again.