Australia Day!

So, today was Australia Day (comparable to the 4th of July in the U.S.) and, as such, I had the day off work. One of the group members at CSIRO, Matt, invited me to an Australia Day cookout. So I joined many of the other CSIRO group members at Matt's house for a fun afternoon of socializing and eating!

My day started around 9am or so when a pair of F/A-18 fighter jets screamed over the graduate house at low altitude. The thundering roar certainly woke me up quickly. The jets circled around a few times before heading home or moving to another location. So, I figured I would just get up and start to get ready for the day. I had to take the train to get to Matt's house, so I decided to walk to the center of the city (where I would later catch the train). I thought it would be fun to get the feel for the day - especially since the Melbourne Australia Day parade was going to be starting soon.

The city was full of people and the energy and spirit of the day was great. Lots of people were running around with Australian flag shirts/shorts/flags/swimsuits (pretty much you name it and they had it). I would think that the environment was probably pretty similar to what would be observed in a big American city on the 4th of July. I could see that they were starting to close off Swanston St for the parade, but I had to catch the train and, unfortunately, missed out on the parade.

Matt, Yani, and their young daughter Audrey's house is great! They have a nice backyard and the house is very open (good for entertaining lots of people). Probably 25 or 30 people were at the cookout and it was a lot of fun to meet some new people. In particular, I met two of the Italian students in the group at CSIRO. They had been traveling when I first arrived in Australia.

The food was great, I had a meat pie (standard Australian dish) as well as chicken wings, sausage, and assorted salads. Everything was excellent. I spent most of the afternoon into the early evening talking with folks and enjoying the day off. Finally, around 7pm or so, I decided to head back to the Graduate House and spent the rest of the night unwinding and getting ready for the upcoming day at work. All in all, it was a fun holiday and I was glad that I could take part in it!