Friday, February 6, 2009

Australia Day 2009

Monday 26th January 2009
Today is Australia Day, because we are such lovely parents and let our children do after school activities, we get rewarded by having to wake up at the crack of sparrow fart on one of our very few days off where we would otherwise have been able to have a lie in.
Fraser and Marisas Scout Troop were raising the flag at the Australia Day ceremony in Dunsborough this morning, we had to be there by 8am which meant that the alarm had to go off at 6am. The alarm did go off at 6am, we felt that 6am, although probably the right time to get up bearing in mind it takes this family to get its act together in the morning, we felt that it was unreasonable and decided that if we pushed it we could get out a bit quicker, so we just rolled over and went back to sleep again for half an hour.
We got to Dunsborough at exactly 8am and had visions of having to sneak Fraser and Marisa through the crowd to their troop unnoticed, the whole thing, it turned out, wasn’t due to start until 8.30am and is invariably a quarter of an hour late.
We bought our tickets for the Great Aussie Breakfast that would follow the ceremony, Fraser and Marisa joined the Scouts as they started to arrive, Kristian got bored and went to the park to play, we found a nice shady spot where we could see what was going on but were not in the full glare of the sun which was pretty fierce this morning.
At about 8.45am, forty five sleepless minutes after we arrived, the ceremony began in earnest. There were a few awards given out, one of which was to a lady who was receiving an award from the government for all the good work she had done.
Then the speeches began, the Scouts, who had been standing at ease waiting for their chance to raise the flag, were getting bored and hot in the sun with no shelter, so they were allowed to lay down on the grass until it was their turn. Kristian couldn’t give a damn, he was having far too much fun in the park to care about what we were doing, we were eyeing the BBQ, we didn’t have time for breakfast, we thought it would have been done and dusted by now and we would have been tucking into our Great Aussie Breakfast.
Eventually the speeches stopped, the Scouts raised the Flag, everyone sang the National Anthem, except Ian, apart from paying his taxes and doing his bit to achieve our target of getting residency over here, is refusing to get patriotic until the Australian Government give us something to be patriotic about.
When the ceremony was over we queued up to get our Great Aussie Breakfast, it consisted of Sausage, Egg, Bacon, a lot of very Greasy Onions and enough BBQ Sauce to sink a battle ship, all served up in a nice Fresh Roll.
We all ate it, Ian was convinced that if you took out the onion and sauce it would have been really nice, but the rest of us were quite happy with it.
After breakfast we went to Castle Rock Beach for a swim, we stayed there for about three hours before heading home, stopping off at Simmo’s for an Ice Cream on the way.
In the afternoon we went to the Café so that Ian could get things ready for the morning, it took longer than expected and we must have been there for the best part of an hour.
From there we headed to the foreshore where the kids went for a swim, we sat and drank coffee whilst watching the world go by, we paid particular attention to all the young drunken Aussies beating crap out of each other near the Jetty.
In the evening we put the kids to bed early and watched the film Bank Job, it was great and well worth watching, we thoroughly recommend it.

No comments: