Happy Australia Day and a Giveaway Winner!!

Today is Australia Day.

I love Australia!! I love everything about it .... the land, the lifestyle, the culture, the people, the generosity of spirit, the freedom ... I love it all!

Perhaps Dorothea Mackellar said it best -

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.

                                                                                              Dorothea Mackellar


So Happy Australia Day to all you Aussie's out there wherever you may be! I hope you have a wonderful day and get to enjoy a pavlova or lamington and some fireworks tonight :)
For those that are doing it tough with "flood and fire and famine" etc
I hope you are "paid .. back threefold" and that things get easier for you soon!

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Now on to our giveaway.... It was amazing to hear and see all of the wonderful contributions to the Queensland Flood Appeal Auctions ... really heartwarming :) 

Thanks to everyone that entered the giveaway too, I wish I had more Pip's to share.

The lucky winner is comment # 5

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Congratulations Lexie from Periwinkle Girl! Please send me an email with your mailing address and I'll get the charm pack out to you ASAP.