Patriot Realm

As the sun sets on the Australia and culture of my youth, I salute the memories and legacies of over 200 years since the arrival of Captain Arthur Phillip, of a People who are fast disappearing into a sea of tik tok, facebook, instagram, and leftist ideologies.

Our language, our music, and our culture are being swallowed up and devoured by a zealous group of misguided, ill-educated and brainwashed ignoramuses who should have attended the Flysa Institute of Patriotic Studies.

Their student debt would be non-existent, and their education would have been infinitely more informed and beneficial.
But today, I wish to consider The Flysa Institute of Linguistic Studies.

As a child, we spent our Christmas holidays at a remote coastal sheep farm in New Zealand. 

The car would be loaded up with camping gear and we would head off on the long drive to spend 2 weeks of fishing, mucking around in the shearing shed, hiking across the paddocks and exploring the rock pools at low tide.

Our Aunts and Uncles would already be there and our cousins would be smug that they had already scanned out the best places to build forts, swim and generally get into mischief.

The journey was always the same. The route to the farm took us over a long winding gravel road that circled its way from the coast to a peak and then would wind relentlessly down the other side to the small bay that was our destination. 

My brother suffered from terrible car sickness and I would invariably go out in sympathy. It got to the stage where Dad would pull over at the same spot each trip and my brother and I would get out of the car, throw up and then get back in and Dad would pull out and head off again. 

No one ever said anything. It was just part of the routine. 

As the Xmas/New Year break approaches many people will have their eyes on the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race; a traditional event starting on Boxing Day.

One of the several unticked items on my bucket list is to sail in the Sydney to Hobart.

Back in the 1970’s and early 80’s I crewed on an ocean racer out of Sandringham Yacht Club in Melbourne.

The boat I was on was a Carter 30, an English design that could better be described as a Slow Boat to China rather than a racing thoroughbred. 

Samuel Pepys is probably one of the most famous diarists in history and his words are treasured throughout the English speaking world. 

A politician from the 1600's, he captured the spirit and soul of Britain in those days of an era we no longer recognise. Though, in some cases, perhaps we do, all rather too well.

I read Mr Pepys most excellent diary entries for Christmas Day and Boxing Day 1665. Back during the days of the Plague, 400 years ago. So much has changed, yet so little.