At first I wasn’t that keen on you…well when I say you, I mean moving to your shores. Yeah, there was your cracker hot days, your relaxed lifestyle, your beaut beaches…but I was stuck in my roots, you know, wanted to be where my friends and family were.

I thought it would pretty much be temporary, once your golden shores enticed my new family here twelve years ago. Give it a year or two, we’d be back where we belonged (well where I thought we belonged, at least) I told my friends. But then I started getting used to you. Slowly I realised how much better our life had become since we started our new one…and like some sort of spell of the down under, you had started to win me over.

Then one of your great mountains took the life of someone I loved most in this world. Shit I was angry, I thought I hated you and would have to leave, take what was left of my little family and scurry back to the place I was so used to, my home, my comforts, my memories like a frightened little bambi hiding in the woods. But much as it pained me to realise, he’d said he would never leave, so neither did we. Instead, I went against my own instincts, the little voices telling me to ‘go back home and curl up in a hole’. It was the days full of sun that helped my heart get warm again. It was your beautiful people – kind and loving and sharing and welcoming. It was your ability to laugh at yourself and a place where people live and breathe summer, water, beaches and sand in your bum crack. Your your way of life pulled a swifty on me. We stayed.

Lucky I did because it was also your Great Southern Land that gave me the incredible person I now call my husband and made my life whole again. The man who makes sunshine. It was your beautiful long days of warmth that helped heal my heart and build my soul. The waters that keep warm until well into the evenings, the love of your people, your incredible cities and burnt orange landscapes.

Straya, it’s taken me almost twelve years but I’m so proud to call you home…this little flightless bird has officially had her wings clipped. Sorry it took me so long but while I’ll never forget where I came from, I sure am glad I live in this incredible land of yours…and can call Australia home…lov’n’hugs Lady MamaG xox