Sometimes you have to be a visitor, a ring in, to appreciate the subtleties of a place. The everydayness gets lost on most long term residents.It is as if the force of life like a strong running body of water, rounds a person like a river stone. The fit is perfect, calm, oblivious to the intensity of the energy that created it.

Australia on the face of it, is brash, assertive, self confident like a swaggering gunfighter. Australia calls a spade a spade and if the correct word was actually spode, Australia would still call it a spade. Somehow it is in the main, a lovable trait because it is cheeky, a dare to correctness.

However to describe Australia in the singular is to deny its plurality or multiplicity. Australia is vast. The largest farm in Australia spreads over 24,000 square kilometers or 9400 square miles.  The 65th largest farm in Australia encompasses 4000 squares kilometers or 1540 square miles.The most expansive farm in the United States of America, the land of super size, is in Texas and covers 3340 square kilometers or 1289 square miles.

Of the 234 countries that exist on this planet, Australia's largest farm is more sizeable than 84 of them. I live on a speck of 217,800 square feet, 20234 square meters, 0.234 square kilometers or 0.0078125 square miles, 5 acres in normal language. This is my piece of Australia, my perspective of the country and is really the only piece to which I can claim any authority. The sheer size of Australia precludes knowing more than a little about it all. Sure, understanding the broad strokes is easy, but drilling down into the details of Australia and being Australian is fraught with the danger of generalisation. It is like smear of vaseline over the lens of a camera to create an image with little texture, a face with no wrinkles.

I would like to share with you life in Australia, a life in Australia. It is the life of a ring in as you will find but hopefully that elicits objectivity. It is not as an exercise in narcissism, but provide a view of Australia as if a window were left open. You can be the voyeur.

                                 The view from the kitchen window on one day at one time.