Australia Day (January 26th) is our national holiday - sort of a combination of Thanksgiving and July 4th. It commemorates the founding of the first colony (convicts!) at Botany Bay in Sydney over 200 years ago. Here is a website with some more info: Australia Day Council
And this one gives some of the history of the holiday: NSW Australia Day Council - History
Generally we celebrate with a public holiday (most shops etc closed), fireworks, picnics & fairs (it is the middle of summer here), the Australia Day awards and citizenship ceremonies for new immigrants which are conducted by the Mayor in each local Municipal Council.
Some Australian Things for Thinking Day Programs:
Australian flags (you'll find one on our website)
Aussie animals especially kangaroos and koalas (check out the Virtual Australia website for some line drawings to colour in and other info. There is a link to them from our front page.)
If you are looking for photos and information about most of our wildlife try this website:
Aussie Wildlife
Aussie wildflowers especially the State emblems (Wattle is the national floral emblem and each state has its own as well)
The Australian Coat of Arms (it has a kangaroo and an emu on it because, firstly they are native to Australia only and secondly they are one of a very few animals who can't take a step backwards! What a symbol for a country, huh!). Here is a website with more info about these: Emblems
Next year, on January 1st 2001, we will also be celebrating 100 years since the birth of our nation. The various state governments got together and agreed on a constitution etc and Australia became a federation on January 1st, 1901. So it will be a big celebration!
Aussie Food:
Some favourite Australian foods and their recipes can also be found on the Virtual Australia website.
A suitable choice for a Thinking Day event might be either lamingtons, damper or Anzac cookies. Anzac cookies (see the Virtual Australia website for the recipe) are an oatmeal cookie whose name commemorates the founding of the Anzac’s, which stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corp in WWI. They were known for their courage and for being larrikins (ratbags)!!
Damper is a soda bread which is traditionally wrapped in aluminium foil and cooked in the coals. Serve warm with butter and honey. It can be served with billy tea - water boiled in a pot (billy!) over the fire, chuck in a couple of gumtree leaves and a handful of tea leaves and allow to stew for a couple of minutes. It is not to everyone’s taste! The eucalyptus flavour can be a bit strong. We often cook our damper by wrapping the end of a stick in foil, rolling out a small handful into a sausage shape and wrapping the sausage around the foil in a cone shape. Hold it over the coals (no flames - it will burn) and gently rotate the stick as it browns to cook evenly. This takes about 10-15 minutes depending on the thickness to be cooked. Slide the damper off the foil and butter the inside of the cone. Add whatever you like - cinnamon sugar, jam (jelly), custard & stewed fruit or even savoury fillings such as stew.
Lamingtons are a plain rectangular sponge cake cut into 2 inch squares, dipped in chocolate icing and rolled in coconut. If you want to make it more fattening, you can split them in half first and fill with jam and cream and then roll them in the icing etc. Yummy!!
Things Aussie kids do:
Pretty much the same as anywhere else in the Western world! They like to wear jeans,
t-shirts and shorts. They spend a lot of time at the beach and at the movies. They like all kinds of bands: Backstreet boys, Aqua, Garbage, Silverchair, Savage Garden etc.... They like TV and we have shows like The Simpsons, Buffy, Charmed, Star Trek, Mad about You, Dawson’s Creek and 90210. They like computers (in fact we have more technology like computers, mobile phones etc in the home than anywhere else in the world) and computer games and Nintendo/Play stations. They like sports especially swimming, tennis, cricket, (Aussie rules) football and basketball.
Christmas in Australia:
Our Christmas is in summer time, which will seem very strange to those of you from the northern hemisphere! We usually eat a cold Christmas lunch (seafood, ham, chicken, turkey plus salads with traditional plum pudding or ice cream pudding for desert) outside under the trees in the warm summer sun. We even have a few of our own Christmas carols to sing, as well as the traditional ones. The Virtual Australia website has a Christmas section for you to check out and here is another one:
Christmas Lounge
Here are a couple more Guiding websites with more information:
Guides Australia - Australian Guiding
Di's Guiding Pages - Australia
Hope this helps you to plan your Thinking Day program. Let us know if there is anything else you need to know.
Please email us by clicking on the icon Click on our worm to go to our Aussie Pictures page
