Australia Day Awesomeness

Soooo.... Australia Day Awesomeness. I promised it, and I shall deliver. I may have been a little bit misleading by calling it that – I don’t mean that I will necessarily deliver awesomeness myself, but I will definitely deliver something about the Australia day awesomeness that I was involved in.


I like to think of myself as quietly patriotic, much like most Aussies. That truly is the Australian way – we love our country so much; but the part we love the most is the laid back attitude, so our patriotism is usually conveyed without moving from the lounge room sofa. Australia Day is generally celebrated as such, mostly involving sitting in the sun all day doing as little as possible while enjoying the things we like to consider the truly Aussie traditions.

We’re only a very young country, so our traditions aren’t quite steeped in history the way traditions of other countries are. Our traditions mostly involve relaxing and enjoying life. BBQ’s, beer drinking, backyard cricket and the hottest 100 form the basis of our Australia Day celebrations and that’s exactly the way I spent my day - minus the cricket, of course. I think I’ve well and truly made my thoughts on sport & exercise in general known by now.


After debating what radio station to listen to, I did end up listening to the Triple J hottest 100 after all. My best friend came around and we sat outside in the sun, listening to the countdown and drinking beer. I chose to drink Crown Lager, because it seemed fitting to drink a beer that was originally only available to visiting dignitaries but after being released to the public has been embraced in truly Australian fashion by being given a good Aussie nickname. So I drank ‘Crownies’ all day.

The countdown was followed by an awesome Paul Kelly tribute concert, which apparently was filmed/recorded back in November of last year somewhere here in Melbourne. It’s a shame because if I’d known about it I definitely would have gone along. I’m not a massive fan of Paul Kelly as such; I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to go to a Paul Kelly concert, but he is an amazing songwriter and hearing some of his songs performed by other artists was pretty cool. There are a few that really need to be sung in his very unique voice, but it was otherwise a great show.

We rounded out the day by watching Aussie Comedian Carl Barron on the Comedy channel. I just about wet myself laughing, which is much better than the traditional ‘wet-yourself-from-drinking-too-much’ that can generally follow an Australia Day celebration.



So that was my Australia day awesomeness. I’ll end by sharing some highlights of my day - the number one song in the hottest 100 countdown, one of my favourite performances from the Paul Kelly Tribute and a bit of Carl Barron.

Happy (belated) Australia Day everyone!