Australia Day 2012

Happy Australia Day to all Aussies, both at home and abroad. 

It was a beautiful day around the country, except in parts of QLD along the Tweed river, where the great lady threw her rainy whim across the land and reminded us of that wonderfully evocative poem, 'My Country' by Dorothea Mackellar that speaks so of our majestic land.

My family began the day in our Napoleons community hall, at 7.30am [!], with a cooked breakfast, neighbourly company of a couple of hundred people, an olde time band, and a flag-raising to mark the occasion.  It's an annual event that locals look forward, and many return to from having moved afar.

Since we have built our home on the site of the old schoolhouse, we had various visitors keen to check out the old girl and see how she was repaired and renovated (pics above are the BEFOREs), and how we have settled into the property and the community. It was a right mess when we got it - inside there were birds, bees, wasps, rabbits, spiders and ivy all calling it home; windows smashed, lights stolen, chimney dripping with damp, carpet burned and eight coats of odd coloured paint over the original lime wash.

Now it's the Sago bindery. It's not quite set up yet, but here are some photos of it just after fixing and painting...  It's lovely that people are keen to visit and reconnect with the school. So many students have learned here, and their children, and THEIR children... from 1870 to just 9 years ago, the old schoolhouse was the centre of town.

We hope to open it up each Australia Day, raise a flag, plant things in the garden that people remember, play cricket on the old oval, and share some time for Napoleons people to feel welcome to come and visit their schoolhouse and laugh about old times.

I intend to blog each January 26th, to see the day grow, and the schoolhouse come alive again.

Happy Australia Day.