Happy Birthday Tim and Australia

Hello everyone today is Australia Day it was a bloody long time ago when the first Europeans arrived to take possession of the country by a bloody long time I mean 228 years.

It is a pleasant day here not hot nor cold, not wet but have had some drizzle. I for some reason wasn't feeling the best this morning and ended up going back to bed for an hour before doing lunch.

Mostly for us it is the birthday of the love of my life, Tim, he is 56 today we are having lunch here but Natasha says I didn't tell her but I thought I did send a group message to all the girls via Facebook but she didn't see it so she isn't coming and it is my fault.

Also today was my brother in-laws birthday so today his family are scattering his ashes at his favourite fishing spot, he passed away last February. So yesterday my sister was telling her daughter that they were going to scatter his ashes she wanted to know what his ashes are so she explained how some people are buried when they died and some people are burnt up. So today they are going to scatter his ashes at his favourite fishing spot. My niece said you burnt Uncle Mick now you want to feed him to the fishes, she then outright refused to go to scatter the ashes. I will find out tonight if she went or not.

So I will end this with a dozen facts about Australia because it is Australia Day.

1. Australia is as wide as the distance between London to Moscow.
2. The biggest property in Australia is bigger than Belgium.
3. More than 85% of Australians live within 50km of the coast.
4. In 1880, Melbourne was the richest city in the world.
5. Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman, earns $1 million every half hour, or $598 every second.
6. In 1892, a group of 200 Australians unhappy with the government tried to start an offshoot colony in Paraguay to be called ‘New Australia’.
7. The first photos from the 1969 moon landing were beamed to the rest of the world from Honeysuckle Tracking Station, near Canberra.
8. Australia was the second country in the world to allow women to vote (New Zealand was first).
9. Each week, 70 tourists overstay their visas.
10. In 1856, stonemasons took action to ensure a standard of 8-hour working days, which then became recognised worldwide.
11. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke set a world record for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Hawke later suggested that this was the reason for his great political success.
12. The world’s oldest fossil, which is about 3.4 billion years old, was found in Australia.