The PR Blog

Valentine's Day. The time of year when love is in the air, and florists start seeing dollar signs. But have you ever stopped to wonder how this holiday of hearts, flowers, and overpriced chocolates came to be?

Legend has it that Valentine's Day traces its roots back to ancient Rome. There are a couple of different origin stories floating around, but one involves a Christian martyr named St. Valentine who was executed by Emperor Claudius II for secretly marrying couples against his decree. 

Another tale suggests that Valentine was a rebel saint who defied the Emperor's orders and continued to perform marriages in secret because, well, love conquers all. 

St. Valentine, the mysterious figure at the heart of Valentine's Day, has captured the imagination of romantics and historians alike. While the details of his life are shrouded in mystery and legend, his legacy as the patron saint of love and affection has endured through the ages.

In Australia and across the world, hard working ants are seeing a plague of grasshoppers - who consume at such a fierce rate of knots that a Canberra parliamentary smorgasbord would disappear faster than a fact in an ABC documentary about climate change.

And a Washington DC or a Wellington Beehive could cut off the food and shut down the bain marie faster than Hunter Biden issuing some pipes to use for rather strange reasons and his father shutting down pipes that could have saved America.

Let us be honest:

Well, I bit the bullet last week. It was time to retire my old " office in a cupboard " and expand my computing needs to a more expansive space. 

New computers. Tick. Truck booked to take the old furniture way. Tick. Happy days! Second hand desks bought and ready to be delivered. There was only one problem:

Some poor bugger had to clean out the old stuff and get ready for the changeover. 

No wonder I have put it off for twenty years. 

In the midst of the most terrible time in our history, even worse than Whitlam or WW2, our country is crying out for a Moses to emerge and lead us out of the wilderness. I rate our present plight as worse than WW2 because at least in that era we were all pulling together for the sake of Australia.

This cannot be said today. Leading up to Federation we had such a man. Someone whose name is probably unfamiliar.

Yet, it was people like him who created the Australia that we knew and loved. A country that gave us pride and showed us that a strong back and a good work ethic could start a revolution. 

During our Australia Day family lunch Waltzing Matilda came up among the collection of background music and prompted quite a discussion, especially from my two grandson’s girlfriends.

My brood have been raised on a diet of Australiana history and anecdotes so the questions have come mainly from the girlfriends who are both city raised born and bred Australian girls.