Happy Australia Day - let's celebrate!

Views in Verse - the Australian.  

Happy Australia Day - let's celebrate!

I am of Irish and English extract - a daily struggle if there ever was one - the conservative and the rebel in the one psyche. Many Australians are. I guess, that is who we mostly became from our early colonial times.

However migrants have now come from all over the world to this great land and forged what it is that we all are today. Not to mention those who lined these shores two hundred years ago when the English first arrived. 

Let's celebrate our great country and all the people in it!!!

My image of the Great Aussie bloke as below is framed from my early years and many of the men I still admire to this day - (including my 'more than Irish' Dad).

The Great Aussie Bloke

He's been the lovable larrikin

The butt of many a joke

For he speaks his mind right at you

plain speaking kind of folk

To get a true likeness of him though...

the painter would need few stokes

For straight up and down 

just as you find him

is the great Aussie bloke:

Give him a field

He'll raze it clean 

just a a given day

Give him a bar 

he'll fill it with fun 

At his regular pay

Open his eyes 

to a worthy cause

He'll move  

without delay 

Yet introduce him 

to a worthy miss

He'll quietly shrink and choke...

Not much with his softer side

The great Aussie bloke

The 'engine's always running'

He's 'chatty' and forthright

A friend  in need...? 

He'll turn up ready

to help him with his plight

Injustice found?

In his own way

He'll defend the given right

A time of darkness...?

he'll be there too

to raise his sleeves to fight...
Then without words
he'll tip his hat.... and
slowly roll a smoke...
little else to say really...
Straight up and down
Just as you find him

He's the ...great ...Aussie ...bloke

Forwarded from my I-phone Grahame J Flynn