G'day! Have you ever thought of visiting Australia?
You might like some tips from one who knows it pretty well. That's me with my local kangaroos. I invite you to pull up a stump and relax for a while. Come and explore Australia with me.
You've landed at Bellingen, NSW, Australia, somewhere on Australia's 25,760 kilometres (16,007 miles) of coastline. I live near Coffs Harbour, 600 km north of Sydney.
Scroll down for 'Some tips for visitors to Australia'.
Pip Wilson from wilsonsalmanac.com
Faces in the Street
Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push
"She struggled to get women the vote. Her son was Australia's most famous writer. They drove each other crazy."'Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push'
Read some free sample chapters of my 573-page novel at boilingbilly.com.
From snowy mountains to boiling deserts .... take your pick
I live about about 100 miles from the most easterly point of the continent and about 2,500 miles from the most westerly point. Click map for the nation's weather.
Wikipedia says ...
The Commonwealth of Australia is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the world's smallest continent and a number of islands in the Southern, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the French dependency of New Caledonia to the northeast; and New Zealand to the southeast.The continent of Australia has been inhabited for over 40,000 years by Indigenous Australians. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the north and by European explorers and merchants starting in the seventeenth century, the eastern half of the continent was claimed by the British in 1770 and officially settled as the penal colony of New South Wales on January 26, 1788. As the population grew and new areas were explored, another five largely self-governing Crown Colonies were successively established over the course of the nineteenth century.
On January 1, 1901, the six colonies federated and the Commonwealth of Australia was formed. Since federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and remains a Commonwealth Realm. The capital city is Canberra although the current population of around 20.5 million is concentrated mainly in the large coastal cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide ... Read on
In case the flag doesn't seem familiar, it's the Eureka flag, and it has a proud history. I think that if we must have a flag at all, it should replace the current one. Better still, imagine there's no countries.
Fair dinkum linkum
- Henry Lawson & his mates: What they didn't teach us in school
- Australian politicians and educators, particularly conservative ones, tend to promote the myth of Henry Lawson as a homespun rural author, and consequently, although there is some truth in it, a bucolic view of Lawson is very widespread - he's been washed in billy tea and eucalyptus antiseptic ...
- How to speak Aussie
- The Macquarie Dictionary's Book of Slang is a good place to start.
- Cheap Ticket Links
- Compare prices of tickets to Downunder.
- Lonely Planet travelcasts
- Podcasts from the leading travel advisory service.
- Australian embassies
- Embassies and consulates worldwide.
- About Australia
- From the Australian Government
- Tourism Australia
- Lots of advice.
- Indigenous Weather Knowledge
- A growing database of Indigenous people's ancient weather knowledge.
- Scribbly Gum
- Devoted to celebrating seasonal events in Australia's natural environment.
- ABC
- Australia's national broadcaster, taxpayer funded, advertising free. Some great stuff here, including a comprehensive free podcast service.
- Wilson's Almanac
- My main website has lots on Australia.
- Search Wilson's Almanac
- Looking for something about Australia? Try the search page.
- Louisa Lawson & Henry Lawson Chronology
- A huge database on the Australia's most famous writer, his suffragette mother and the people they knew: the Australian literary, bohemian and political characters and events of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
- ABC RSS feeds
- Dozens of RSS/XML feeds on many subjects: news, sports, science, entertainment, etc.
- australia.gov.au
- Official Australian Government site.
- Picture Australia
- Search for people, places and events in the collections of libraries, museums, galleries, archives, universities, etc, in Australia and abroad.
- About Australia
- Travel and tourism guide.
- Wikitravel Australia
- The Wikitravel guide to travel in Australia.
- Australia Portal
- The Wikipedia Australia portal.
- active.org.au
- Australian social change portal.
- Community Activist Technology
- Sydney's 'CAT' geeks created the open-source self-publishing software which you use at indymedia.org.
Australia in the news
Some good, some not so good. But real news, updating here every 30 minutes (you will need to refresh the page).
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byCome to Australia via the Amazon
Reader's Digest - Australia the Beautiful
Amazon Price: $17.99 (as of 07/12/2009) 
Lonely Planet Australia
Amazon Price: (as of 07/12/2009)
Globe Trekker - Australia (Double DVD)
Amazon Price: $26.99 (as of 07/12/2009)
Video Visits: Discovering Australia
Amazon Price: (as of 07/12/2009)
Australia: Our Land, Our Music
Amazon Price: $22.99 (as of 07/12/2009)
Australian photos
Updating regularly, so come back again
Samples of people in Australia, from my flickr page.
Aussies in the news
Updating here every 30 minutes (if you refresh the page).
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byFor the sunburnt country
Refresh page for more designs of T-shirts, mugs, mousemats, caps, etc
Even if you never come here, you can say "I didn't visit Australia and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"
Some tips for visitors to Australia
- On the whole, you will find Australians quite welcoming and friendly. Don't expect Anglo-Celtic Crocodile Dundees: Australia is the most urbanised nation on earth, and also one of the most racially and ethnically diverse.
- Don't expect to see kangaroos hopping down the main street of Sydney. Sydney has 4.25 million people and consequently not a lot of wildlife. However, kangaroos are plentiful in Australia, if you go to the bush (forest) away from urban areas. If you go camping away from people, chances are 'roos will visit your camp at sunset or sunrise.
- Don't be disappointed if Australians don't respond well to comments about "throwing another shrimp on the barbie". It is not an Australian culinary custom but something invented by a US advertising agency in the 1980s. Australians don't even have shrimps. We have prawns. We do have barbecues: we borrowed this particular cooking technique from Americans in the 1940s and '50s.
- Koalas are cute, but most Australians have never seen one outside a zoo. Australians prefer dogs to koalas and in recent years the last remaining small colonies of koalas near urban regions have been canined into nothingness. Even in the bush, your chances of ever seeing a koala are slim indeed, but keep looking up, you might get lucky. I once heard of someone who once saw a koala (being mauled by a dog).
- Distances: Australia is approximately the same size as the USA (without Alaska), so prepare yourself for long distances between cities and towns. From west to east you will pass through three time zones.
- Climate: A lot of people expect Australia to be hot and dry all over, but because of the great distances involved you might find yourself in snow fields or steaming tropical jungles.
- Accent: One striking thing about Australia is that from Sydney to Perth (which is about as far as from Scotland to Turkey) there is hardly any variation of accents. Usually only Australians themselves can detect, with difficulty, regional accents.
- Dot art: Be careful buying "dot paintings". You might return home with an expensive "genuine Aboriginal painting" that has in fact been mass produced in a factory or even a sweat shop. They're not worth more than the acrylic paints that they've been painted with. Much the same can be said of a lot of products in tourist stores - as in tourist shops in any country, what is sold is rarely genuine indigenous art.
"I love a sunburnt country"
'My Country' by Dorothea Mackellar (1885 - 1968)The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
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!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze%u2026
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
Aussie travel news
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byby Almanac
I'm a writer from Australia. My website is http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com and my novel is at http://www.boilingbilly.com/ (more)
