Here's a poem for you


This poem is called 'My Country. It was written by Dorothea Mackellar in 1904 when she was 19. Mrs's P's sister bought her a book with it in for her birthday. Mrs P told me it has some lovely metaphors in it but I'm not sure what they are. Do you know? 


if you click on the link at the bottom, you can hear the second stanza being read. It is an advertisement for the Ghan, which is a railway in Australia. 


My Country



The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!


A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.


Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly. 


Listen to the second stanza being read.

Hanging out in a Queensland garden


G'day everybody!


I thought you might like to come with me for a trip around the garden where I am staying. Gardens in North Queensland look just like ours at home at first. There's a lawn and flower beds with some bushes and trees. When you look more closely, however, you realise that Queensland gardens are a bit different. 

I bet quite a few of you have  swing in your garden. Maybe someone in school has tried to grow an ornamental banana tree but I don't think anyone at Cobden has bananas growing in their garden. Queenslanders are always talking about the price of bananas. Because they grow everywhere in Queensland, people expect to buy them cheaply. Over the last few years, however, drought, floods and a hurricane have done a lot of damage to the farmers' crops so bananas are more expensive in Australia than they are in the UK at the moment. It takes a few years for a banana tree to grow big enough to bear fruit and once the bananas appear, the tree dies back so it's going to take a few years for the price of bananas to come back down. The banana farmers are "doing it tough". That's Australian for "having a hard time". 


Next I'm going to show you an Aussie icon. Australians get all sentimental about these and are also very proud of them because they were invented in Australia by a man called Lance Hill and they are made in Australia and used every day. Here I am sitting in front of the famous trade mark:

I bet you can't wait to see what it is!

What do you mean it's just a washing line? That's a Hill's Hoist! Australian's get a bit fed up of being told that everything good comes from the Old Country (i.e. the UK) so when they have something that is invented and made in Australia they are very proud of it. 


Now I didn't expect to find one of these in an Australian garden:

Mrs P's sister got it as a Christmas present from her husband. He sometimes finds it hard to find something that will be a real surprise but she really wasn't expecting this!


I didn't expect to find a mermaid beside the pool either.

She was made by Mrs P's sister who makes lots of pottery. Can you see the railings around the pool? Every pool in Australia has to have railings and a lockable gate so that small children can't fall in. Lot's of people in Australia have pools because the weather is so hot. When our plane landed in Brisbane you could see all the pools twinkling in the sunshine as we came down to land. 


Here are some more strange pottery creatures: 

This is a baby crocodile coming out of the egg. 


This next one shows a puffin with some fish in its mouth and some towers on top og hills. 

If you are interested in re-cycling, have a closer look at the floor boards on the verandah. They are made out of re-cycled plastic milk bottles. 


Here's a view of the front of the house. Can you see all the blinds in front of the windows? They are to keep the sun out of the house. There are two little things that look like chimney pots on top of the roof. They have fans inside them that suck the hot air out of the house. 

The other thing you will notice on top of the roof are the solar panels. These produce electricity that can be used in the house. Any spare electricity can be sold back to the grid. The government is giving everyone grants to install these. 

I found this bike as I was rummaging around the garden so that's it for now. I'm off for a bike ride. Hooroo!


There are some more pictures of Queenslander houses here

There's gold in them there mills!


G'day everybody! Today I'm going to tell you all about my trip to Venus Battery. 

Here I am sitting in front of the building. As you know, I've only got a little brain so I took a photograph of some information about the mill. Here it is:

Basically, what would happen was that miners would feed in the ore they had dug up from the mine at one end of the mill and gold would come out at the other end. 


This diagram will give you an idea of what happened: 

Here's a picture of the machinery inside: 

The squarish section in the middle of the photograph is where the ground up bits of rock were washed with water. The lighter dust would be washed away leaving the heavier gold. In the background is the battering machinery that crushed up the rocks and made so much noise they could be heard all over Charters Towers.   

This machine looks a bit like a food mixer, doesn't it? It was used to crush up the bits of stone that had been washed away from the gold to make sure that any tiny bits of gold still left inside were extracted. Even though they went to all this trouble to get all the gold out, Citigold, the mining company in Charters Towers, were able to use modern methods to squeeze even more gold out of the spoil heaps that once surrounded the Venus Battery like huge mountains. 

  
Here I am sittin in front of the cyanide plant at the mill. Cyanide is a deadly poison and it is used to extract gold from ore. 

Here I am in front of one of the cyanide vats. 


These next photographs were taken inside the assayer's office. The assayer would test the gold to see how pure it was and decide how many carats it had. 

Here I am sitting beside the crucible that the assayer would use to heat up the gold dust in order to test it. Can you see where the crucible was made? 

And here I am sitting amongst the end products: gold ingots. Behind me is the furnace where the crucible would be heated up. No wonder gold is so expensive. It takes a lot of hard work to dig it up from the ground and extract it from the rock. The other reason why it is so valuable is that, unlike other metals it never rusts or corrodes so it always looks shiny and new. 


I know that some of you are learning some Australian words so I'll just finish off my post with an explanation of a very important Australian tradition which is "smoko". "Smoko" is what Australians call their mid-morning tea break , which we sometimes call "elevenses". It's called "smoko'" because the early settlers would have to brew up their tea on a camp fire, which would be very smoky. Along with their tea, they would eat a "damper', which is bread dough wrapped round a stick and cooked over the fire. 


Well, I'm off for my "Smoko" now! Hooroo!


  More information about Venus Battery

Gold Town


Here I am in Charters Towers. Gold was discovered here around 1870. In almost no time at all, a little village turned into a huge town as a result of the gold rush. By 1890, the town had many hotels and theatres, four newspapers and a stock exchange which called the price of shares three times a day - more times than any other stock exchange in Australia at that time. The town became so wealthy and had so many attractions that people began to call it The World. Some people still call it that today, as you can see. 

Can you see a blue blob in the distance behind me? Here it is up close:

You can just read that it says, 'The World'. It is written on a huge water tank on the hill behind the town. This hill gave Charters Towers it's name. A man called Charters was the Commisioner for Gold in Australia at the time gold was discovered. Tor is a Cornish word for hill and there many Cornish miners emigrated to mine gold in Charters Towers. Over the years, people stopped saying 'Tor' and started to say 'Towers' instead. 


As you know, I'm a bear with a very little brain but I found all this information at the Charters Towers tourist information centre. They've got a models of the world there. Here's a picture of me feeling on top of the world!

Just behind me you can see a picture of one of the fancy hotels they built during the gold rush. All the waiters are waving from the balcony. 


There was also a model of a poppet. That's what they call the pit head in Australia.

I like to find things that are bear size once in a while!


There were some interesting photographs and displays in the information centre. 

This display is about the people who set up mills to extract the gold from the rocks that the miners brought to the surface. The photograph shows a big posh house that E. H. Plant, one of the men who set up the Venus Battery, built for himself. It's still in Charters Towers but it is part of a school now. We're going to visit the Venus Battery another day. It's called a 'battery' because they had heavy machinery there that battered the gold out of the rocks. 


This photograph shows a much smaller house!

This is the kind of shack that the first miners built for themselves when the gold rush first started. It's a good job it's warm in North Queensland! 

Here I am in the arcade next to the information centre. This display is about some of the scams that went on in the gold rush. People would sell shares to set up a mine and then just run away with the money without even trying to dig up any gold. 'Rort' is another Australian word. It also means 'scam' or 'swindle'. I know Year 4 are learning some Australian. Good on ya, Year 4!


Here's a better view of the arcade - with your favourite bear adding a touch of class. It looks a bit like the County Arcade or the Thornton Arcade in Leeds, doesn't it? Well, it's not surprising. It was built at around the same time and the people of Charters Towers were keen to show that whatever could be done in the old country back home could be done in Australia. 

It made all their hard work seem worth while, I guess. 

Every hour, on the hour, there is a re-enactment of the calling of the price of You can see some more information about Charters Towers here:shares on the stock exchange, which took place in this very arcade. It's that time again - here it is!

A door beside the information centre opens and out comes a tableau.

Can you spot today's special guest?

Here's the outside of the Stock Exchange Arcade.

I hope you enjoyed your first visit to Charters Towers. There's lot's more to come. We're going to Venus Battery next. I wonder if I will see some gold? 

Hooroo!

You can see some more information about Charters Towers here:

My Trip to Magnetic Island


G'day!


That's another bit of Australian for you. It means 'Good day'. 

Our journey to Magnetic Island began in Townsville after a plane flight from Brisbane that lasted one and a half hours. Can you believe that we spent all that time in a plane and were still in the same state? Australia really is a huge country. You'll be getting a post card from me soon that will show you exactly how big Australia is. 

Magnetic Island was named by Captain Cook. Do you know who he was? When he sailed past the island his compass stopped pointing towards the North like it should. It was pointing towards the island instead. Captain Cook thought that the island must be magnetic in some way and so called it Magnetic Island. He was wrong, but the name stuck!  

Mrs P’s sister and brother-in-law met us at the air port. Then we had a really important job to do. We went to meet Mrs P’s great niece and pick her up from school. She was really excited because she got to finish school straight after lunch that day. Here is Chelsea standing with me at the school gate. Can you see the canopy over the gate? 

Everyone is very aware of the importance of shade in Australia because the sun is so strong. Even total strangers will stop you and remind you to put some sun tan lotion on if it looks like you might be getting sun burn. Sadly, nearly everyone in Australia knows someone who has had a melanoma. They have a saying to remind them about sun protection. It's "Slip, slop, slap!" It stands for, "Slip on a T-shirt, slop on the sun cream and slap on a hat!" I expect the only hats you'll be slapping on at the moment are woolly and I hope you don't slip on the ice! (That's a play on words by the way. I can be a funny bear sometimes!)

The next thing on the agenda was lunch and here I am sitting with Chelsea and her Grandad. Although it’s a sunny day, we’re sitting inside where it’s nice and cool because they’ve got air conditioning. Going to the mall and going to the cinema is extra popular in Australia because they always have the air con on and it’s nice and cool.

Here’s another shot of the restaurant.

After lunch, we caught the ferry to Magnetic Island and here I am sitting on the veranda of the house we rented. Chelsea and I are going to take you on a tour of the house and garden.

Here we are sitting by the pool underneath a palm tree.

And here I am having a rest on the sun lounger.

Here are some more shots of the garden.

And here we are by the front gate. Those plants you can see growing along the front drive grow outside in Australia but in England we can only grow them inside as pot plants.

 The pink flowers growing on the tree in this photo are called Frangipani. They smell heavenly, a little bit like jasmine.

Here I am investigating some more plants in the garden. Again, I’m sure I’ve seen these growing in pots in England.

The next day, we went in search of some wild-life. Can you see the rock wallabies behind me? They’ve got really good camouflage.

You can see them more clearly in close up.

And here I am getting to know them a bit better.  I was too polite to say anything to them but they really do pong. Rock wallaby wee doesn’t smell even half as nice as frangipani!

Here I am trying out my camouflage. I need different colour fur to hide like a rock wallaby!

Here we are standing on the old ferry jetty. There’s a new ferry port now so it’s a bit more peaceful for the rock wallabies.

Here we all are at the end of the jetty. I'm with Mrs Porter, her mother-in-law, her sister and her brother-in-law. 

We’ve been watching the divers who are exploring a wreck just below the surface of the water.

Here I am sitting in front of the pier at Nelly Bay.

Here’s another Australian tree. It’s a Morton Bay Fig. It's the sort of tree that grows in mangrove swamps. 

Well that's all for now. I'm off to Charters Towers next. It's a god mining town so perhaps I'll find some gold!

Hooroo!