Australia Day 4: Pick a flag - any flag

As Bev's said in her post here, flag waving is something that's done a lot on Australia Day, but not so much for the rest of the year. Above is a window display on Australia day at Queenscliffe. The shop was shut, and I'm sure the staff were all at the beach or the barbie, with young Shane wondering who's lifted his beach ball and waistcoat.

The flag is also seen a lot on cars around Australia day, but not often as large and frequent as on this ex-US Naval Jeep. Perhaps he wanted the nationality of the owner to be unmistakable?


One of the great things about Australia is how many things actually are a mess, and don't make a lot of sense. This includes our flag, which isn't even all ours. The Australian flag can be easily confused for the New Zealand one, both being a quarter borrowed from Great Britain's Union Flag, and with stars on. (The Kiwi's one has fewer stars, and their stars are red.) To confuse matters further I thought I'd do a quick survey of some of Australia's flags. So here's a selection.

Seen here being dropped (with accessories) in front of Melbourne to open the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Museum's Pageant, this is the RAAF Ensign. The bit with the kangaroo in the roundel is folded over, of course.

The Royal Australian Navy Ensign has a white ground with blue stars, and is similar in colours to the Royal Naval ensign.


The Merchant Ensign for civil ships is identical, to both the flag and the Navy's ensign, but on a red ground. Seen above aboard a Sydney harbour ferry and below next to the Australian flag, flying by Cape Schanck Lighthouse on Victoria's coast.

Seen by another lighthouse, Cape Ottway, this photograph by Pam shows the Australian flag again, but partnered with the Aboriginal flag.


The Aboriginal flag has an interesting story behind it, and is unusual among these flags in that although they are all meant to be cared for within a set of rules, it is actually copyright, with the intellectual property belonging to its designer. Today a hoo-hah (as reported in The Age) over Google using the flag as part of a competition design on their website brought this into focus. Winning designer schoolgirl Jessie Du, 11, is a student at Rydalmere East Public School. Her design had the koala and possum beside the central yellow disc of the Aboriginal flag, but;

"The designer of the flag, Harold Thomas, who owns the copyright to the flag, refused to give Google permission to reproduce the design on its website, Google said." The Age went on to state: "Thomas, who lives in Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory, said he refused only because Google did not approach him in a respectful way and had demanded to reproduce the flag without charge."

How very Australian. And very Australian too is flags at the cricket, as seen here at the MCG.

So you were wondering what it is made up of, right? The Australian flag is composed of three parts: The Union Flag (often known by its nickname the Union Jack) in the top left corner, the 'Star of Federation' in the bottom left corner, and The Southern Cross, taking up the right half of the flag. The Star of Federation is a seven pointed star, representing each of six states with a point on the star, and one more point for Australia's territories. The Southern Cross is a constellation that can be seen from all of Australia's states and territories, of course. The Union flag ensures that Australia carries (combined) the full set of the flags of the countries that make up Great Britain, while failing to do the same for its own states and territories. Very Australian.

As Australia is a federated country, each state does have its own flag. This is the Victorian example, with its own Southern Cross.

There is another flag that most Australians would recognise, that comes in pairs. One example is seen here, and it's the flag you swim between at the beach if you want the lifeguard's cover. I'm not sure how fast you need to pedal to stay on the water, or if it's for the fish - you know, that 'one that needs a bicycle'...

Sorry. So to finish, I'd like to introduce another nation's flag. The 26th of January is shared with India as they celebrate their Republic Day, and despite the recent sad events, most Indians share a great time and their marvelous culture with us in Australia. This final picture was taken on Australia day a couple of years ago as the Indian contingent in the parade passed by.

James

Australia Day 3: Doug's Short Life

The story of Doug's brief life perhaps shows the best and worst of Australia. Doug was a koala joey (baby), and while koalas don't do much, they are quintessentially cute, even to those who don't usually do cute.

Little victim: the koala joey receives medical attention at Australia Zoo (Wildlife Warriors)

Found wounded, on 19 January, sadly Doug was to die on 22nd after a sustained effort to safe his life, and after the vets had expected him to 'make a full recovery'. It appears that a person or persons unknown had decided to shoot Doug (and his mother) with a pellet air rifle.

From the ABC reports; "Animal hospital manager Gail Gipp says the mother is expected to survive."

You would have to go a long way to find something as inoffensive as a one kilogram baby koala. Even the bigger ones (as seen here in a photo by Pam) are very teddy bear like.

Koalas sleep, eat the poisonous leaves of certain gum trees, and are mostly stoned as a result due to the poisons and digestive requirements of eating gum leaves. Not fast movers, the height of a koala's ambition is to find a good nook between branches in a tree, ideally within easy commute of some leaves - and that's it. Hopes had been raised for Doug when one of the vets reported that Doug "was giving me a bit of attitude". They are wild animals and should be treated as such, not teddy bears, despite the cute shiny nose, but they certainly don't deserve to be shot.

Apricots...

Apricots. No further comment needed really, except to say these are from Pam's tree, and they look lovely.



Two large boxes of these beauties reside in the kitchen awaiting their demise... (bwah ha ha)

Bev

Pam and James (in chorus):
"Not two boxes... THREE!"

Birds of BC

On the trip, one fascinating aspect has been meeting up with friends (old and new) and family, and gaining insights into their interests, expertise and hobbies. Pam, Bev’s mother, has been a keen birder for some years now, eagerly seeking out birds wherever in the world she finds herself. For this guest spot on the blog, we asked Pam to present a selection of some of the birds of British Columbia, as we’ve enjoyed discussing some of the sightings and work she’s undertaken, including helping compile data for the British Columbia Breeding Bird Atlas. (For more see The BCBBA website).

Notably, and as mentioned in the captions, some shots were taken by positioning the digital camera behind the bird spotting telescope (known in the family as ‘the bun gun’) as an extemporary telephoto lens; a tricky, but sometimes remarkably successful technique, (known as digiscoping).

-Over to Pam!

Thanks, Bev and James, for the chance to share some of my bird photos on your blog! Photographing birds is a challenge, but has added a new area of interest to my birding passion. I took all these photos over the past three years, all in British Columbia and many in our own back yard. I hope you enjoy them.


This is a female Belted Kingfisher, taken through the spotting scope; she was perched on a dead branch, and diving for fish in the lake. Note the murderous fish-spearing beak! Interestingly, the female has two ‘belts’, while the male has only one, an unusual variation of gender-specific plumage.

This California Quail pair (with the male left, female right) are drinking at their favourite small dish on Jim’s wall. They come nearly every afternoon and bring the kids when they’ve hatched. Day old chicks are like ‘walnuts on toothpicks’, to use Jim’s phrase, and are able to forage for themselves and even fly a little.

One of Canada’s smallest diving ducks, this is a male Hooded Merganser, elegant and crisp in spring plumage on a brightly lit local pond.

This male Northern Flicker, also taken through the spotting scope, was taking his turn at sitting on the eggs in the nest hole. The Northern Flicker is an abundant woodpecker, large, colourful and easily observed across Canada.

This juvenile Osprey (taken through the spotting scope) was perched very conveniently at eye level on pilings near a wooden jetty where I was standing with other birders. Earlier, we had enjoyed watching the parent birds teaching both their young how to fish.

A Pygmy Nuthatch is a very endearing little bird and rare in Canada, being found only in the Okanagan Valley and south Nicola Valley. A tiny nuthatch, it nests in Ponderosa Pines and feeds on insects in the bark. Obviously, it also likes the occasional seed to vary the diet! Here one is seen at our bird bath, which they visit nearly every day. They remain throughout the winter and liven the winter scene with their communal roosting and feeding. They are acrobatic feeders, especially favouring chunks of beef fat in an old onion bag hung outside our sunroom window.

This is a rufous morph Red-Tailed Hawk, very reddish-brown (taken through the spotting scope). The species varies from very pale to very dark, but all have the characteristic belly band and unmarked ‘bib’. This is probably the most abundant raptor in Canada, magnificent when soaring and hunting on the wing.

This young Rufous Hummingbird is seeking nectar from the flower basket planter I hang from a large pine tree each summer. They love pink tubular flowers especially, but also love the lobelia. Rufous Hummingbirds migrate south along high mountain pastures, where they can find flowering nectar-bearing plants late in the season, long after those in the valleys have finished blooming. (James adds: The hummingbird's amazing wing 'design' is, I think one of the most under-rated pieces of nature's remarkable engineering - notice how the wings are moving so fast they have almost disappeared in the photo. The hummingbird can fly backwards, and hover, as well as all the 'usual' avian maneuvers, and the energy-demand 'spike' this flight creates probably also explains why it needs to run on sugars!)

And lastly, one of our largest water birds, related to the European Divers, is the Loon. Its eerie call is evocative of the Canadian north. This bird, like the kingfisher, has a murderous fish-spearing beak. It cannot walk on land, but is a superb swimmer and diver. When seen face-on, its head is completely spherical, perfectly streamlined for deep and prolonged hunting in the water. Somewhat surprisingly in view of their size, loons are very difficult to photograph well! This bird was photographed through the spotting scope.

Pam