Our Australian donors this quarter were generous. It’s hard to grasp how really far away y’all are, and how strange it is that the Anglosphere stretches so far. There is something special in the Oz character, brash and friendly. When I see Prince Harry, I think he ought to carve out a monarchy in Oz. Much more fitting than the rest of ’em.
I came across this street musician a few months ago: everyone ought to be as full of life, melody and happiness as he.
A thank you back to Oz for the quarterly:
Excellent! My beloved lived in Oz for ten years, and misses the friendliness of the people and the climate. Fortunately for me, her children (now in their forties) and year-old granddaughter are here in the UK.
The location of the clip is Caloundra on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast; Smith is based at Byron Bay in Northern New South Wales. The 250km between the 2 points include some of the nicest beaches and surfing in Australia.
To a dinki-di (pronounced; dinky-die) Aussie, Waltzing Matilda, and no matter how it is played, is an emotionally evocative experience, especially when hearing that familiar tune in other parts of the world.
Back in April 2008, my wife and I joined a tour of WW1 battlefields where the ANZACs made a reputation for themselves, particularly in the French town of Villers-Bretonneaux that they took back from the Germans on ANZAC Day, April 25, 1918, after much heavy fighting and dying.
In that town there is a primary school that surviving Australian soldiers helped to restore after the war ended and that is now called the Victoria School, and named for the state from which most of the ANZACs who had taken part in the liberation of Villers-Bretonneaux came from.
My wife and I, along with around three hundred other Aussies paid a planned visit to that school after the town mayor had welcomed us to the town. The music teacher, a young and attractive woman, put on a bit of a show for us in the school yard, by having about a dozen of her young charges sing some ‘Aussie’ songs for us.
It was wonderful to hear children singing Aussie songs in the middle of France, but when they got to Waltzing Matilda us Aussies just couldn’t help ourselves and joined in together. It was a very emotionally uplifting experience for everyone, and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the place.
A wonderful and most memorable time!
And thank you Dympthna for such a lovely acknowledgment.
“Tis Waltzing Matilda – one of my top 10 fave songs – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZqN1glz4JY&ab_channel=majorsnag.
Others in top 10:
Mull of Kyntire – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcZVRiB9AQk&ab_channel=TheBeatlesVEVOHQ
Green Fields of France – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_mBJgsaxlY&ab_channel=BattlesOfWar
Fields of Athenry – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtzEaWc36lw&ab_channel=TheDublinersHQ
Spancil Hill – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yndityNBbJs&ab_channel=parade0000
Take This Waltz- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytdjYjM-cLg&list=PLwjD81rPeQqXrMf0u_3Qk5Ye4X_2ddQjQ&ab_channel=JoyMilonguero
Bang On The Ear – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmyPHfu9c0c&ab_channel=FishermansBluesHQ
A Whiter Shade of Pale – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA&ab_channel=Meowbay
The tyranny of distance works in our favor.While we feel part of the Anglosphere we can also laugh at the pompous twits and strutting elite who deliberately turn the English language into an exercise in transparent dishonesty and deceit.
I include Theresa “sharia law is wonderful and takes a load off our courts”May , the Manchester and London Chiefs of police and Sadiq Kahn(Muslim mayor of London) in the pompous strutting twits collection.
We sit and observe the goings on in the rest of the Anglosphere from a distance ,but we are aware that the ripples of insane left-wing pro -Islamic propaganda (falsely portraying itself as centrist and reasonable)reach our shores from Europe ,Britain and the U.S.And those ripples infect the weak headed Greens party ,the Marxist Labor party and the left wing dominated tatters of a formerly respectable party led by the braying Malcolm “I like to hold end of Ramadam dinners with terrorists and wife beaters at Government House” Turnbull .
And thus we must take an interest .We can see the disaster wrought upon the West by deluded left wing cultural and moral relativism.And we fear that our politicians (with the honorable exceptions of Pauline Hanson and Tony Abbott) would lead us down that blood soaked primrose path to daily Muslim terrorist carnage on our streets.
Idyllic. Sadly, though, I now see this through eyes clouded by recent events, and the history of the past millenium and a half. No bollards or Jersey barriers, a wide flat expanse, and hundreds of joyous and naive strollers. What a perfect Nice or Westminster Bridge. Miserable prudence must supplement idylls. Life has changed forever.
LOVELY!!!
Thank you for this beautiful rendering of that iconic melody. I too love Australia. God bless Oz. I’m coming to see you in a few months time.
You’re all welcome. What I notice about “Waltzing Matilda” is that it seems to serve as an informal national anthem. Even other countries know it.
Juzzie Smith is an accomplished musician. I heard a small clip of his “journey” song and knew I’d found a happy soul.
It was hard to choose among his songs, but I did this one partly for his rendition, and partly as an antitdote to all the bloodshed elsewhere.
There is an Australian author on our sidebar that I recommend to Australians. He is a geo-strategist and his analyses have turned out to be right – for example, his prediction of the impoverishment a carbon tax would cause. And it did. He also says that Oz will be drawn by necessity into increasing cooperation with China. Makes sense.
The book on our sidebar discusses the coming global demographic implosion and its effects on cities.