Today is Australia Day, a national holiday here in the Land Down Under.

Aussies disagree about when it should be celebrated, why it should be celebrated, what it signifies, and who should celebrate it. But they all agree that the celebration should feature lots of alcohol, plentiful sausages, and countless jokes about New Zealand’s clear national inferiority.

England’s Captain James Cook gets credit for making the first recorded European discovery of Australia, planting the first English flag back on August 22, 1770. The English then filed the discovery under “Too Far Away” and forgot about it until 1776 when those pesky American colonies declared their independence, depriving the Brits of a convenient spot to dump their convicts.

Fifteen years later, French King Louis XVI read accounts of Captain Cook’s voyages, exclaimed, “Holy merde!” and ordered the Comte de La Pérouse to get his derrière down under ASAP to claim some of that sweet, sweet Southern Hemisphere real estate for France.

Undoubtedly feeling pretty damn proud of himself, La Perouse sailed into Botany Bay on January 26, 1788. Unfortunately, in one of the greatest twists of fate in history, he discovered that the British First Fleet had arrived in the very same spot just two days earlier.

Two days. Imagine how different history might have been had La Perouse not dawdled along the way. Aussies would now speak French instead of English. Instead of playing cricket, the national pastime would have become surrendering to Germany. And there would be one more place where Jerry Lewis is considered a genius.

After leading his crew in chanting nanny-nanny-nanny at the tardy Frenchies, British Commander Philip cordially invited them to stay long enough to replenish their supplies and repair their ships, but then reminded them of the old adage that houseguests and fish all begin to smell after three days. I would imagine that adage was particularly true on 18th century ships of discovery.

After imposing on their British hosts’ generous natures for six weeks, La Pérouse finally set sail for New Caledonia. His run of bad luck continued because after hoisting anchor and waving au revoir to the English fleet, La Perouse and his ships sailed out of Botany Bay and were never seen again. No one knows what became of them.

So Australia Day is now an event celebrated annually in the Land Down Under. It’s celebrated on January 26, the day that the First Fleet arrived with the first batch of English convicts. But some people think it should be celebrated on April 28, the date Captain Cook first discovered the continent. Others insist it should be on January 1, the date the six Australian colonies joined together to form the nation. And some dissenters think it shouldn’t be celebrated at all because the arrival of the Europeans doomed the aborigines.

If I had a vote (which the Australian government has irrationally not seen fit to bestow upon me) I’d go for January 1. But that date is already a national holiday and there’s no way any real Aussies would vote for overlapping holidays that eliminate a perfectly good reason to throw a party.

One two three. It’s easy to remember goddaughter Stella’s birthday because she was born on the first month’s 23rd day.

There are about a thousand great Stella stories that stand out in my memory, but here’s one of our favorites:

Stella has always had remarkable musical abilities and she started playing classical piano when she was a very little girl. So we were very happy to receive an invitation to one of her first recitals when she was, let’s say, ten years old.

We arrived at the appointed recital hall at the appointed time on the appointed day, weaved our way through the crowded room and found that Dan and Caren, her parents, had saved us a couple seats. We settled in for what we thought would be a bunch of little girls in pretty dresses struggling through something barely more sophisticated than Chopsticks.

How wrong we were. Stella’s competitors were a group of very talented, but incredibly intense Indian and Chinese girls. Their intensity made itself obvious by the beads of sweat dripping down their foreheads as they played, the veins bulging in their necks, the tight straight lines that were their lips, and most obviously by the stage mothers who seemed to live and die with every perfect and not-so-perfect note their daughters hit. They played not with joy, but with two outs, bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, seventh game of the World Series stress etched on all their beautiful little girl faces. They faced down their keyboards as if they were demons and they were engaged in mortal combat.

To be absolutely honest, many of them were incredible pianists. But is this really the kind of situation you really want to throw your little girl into?

Stella was a little different. As far as we could tell she played perfectly. Maybe she was tense. Maybe she was as stressed as all the other little girls. But she didn’t show it if she was. She played as if she might be a bit disinterested, looking around the room, maybe even giving a little nod and a smile to her parents in the crowd during a particularly difficult portion of some étude or concerto or whatever the hell she was playing. (As you can probably tell, I am quite the classical music enthusiast.)

Soon after that recital Stella announced that she was bored by classical music and was switching over to free form jazz, something that would give her a chance for much more creativity. Some folks might say this was a strange decision for a little girl, but young Stella has always been advanced beyond her tender years.

So an accomplished jazz pianist she became. And before too long she was invited to join a band that played gigs at well-known venues all around Los Angeles. She continued with that band throughout her high school years.

Stella’s twenty-one today and still a very creative young woman. She majors in film at an elite East Coast university.

Happy birthday, Stella. We love you and can’t wait to see your name scroll across the big screen for the first time.

Watch this video at your own risk. It’ll make you cry like a baby. Well, it made us cry like babies. If you have a couple extra bucks lying around, feel free to make a contribution.

Many friends and readers have written to ask if we’ve survived the massive Aussie bushfires. The good news is that beautiful little Angaston has so far escaped unscathed. But the fires are the nation’s biggest story and we suffer a moment’s extreme discomfort each time they set off the Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. practice fire alarm.

We jump up and briefly consider throwing everything in the car before evacuating. Luckily, the alarms always wind down pretty quickly and we realize it was just another test.

Neighbor John came over the other night to give us his preferred evacuation route. Everyone is supposed to gather at the local cricket oval, which is only about 100 yards from John’s house, but he’s analyzed the situation very carefully and come to the determination that it won’t be safe because it’s surrounded by far too many towering pines and gum trees.

His preferred escape route takes us the opposite direction to a much safer oval in Stockwell.

Australia’s a huge country — the same size as the United States — and most of the devastating fires you see on TV are nearly 1000 miles away. They’re tragic, but unlikely to impact us here. There’s another small but stubborn fire blazing through the Adelaide Hills,which is about fifty miles away.

Finally, there is one absolutely devastating fire roaring across Kangaroo Island, which sits about 120 miles from here and just ten miles offshore. Thousands of kangaroos and koalas have already been killed and injured. Hundreds of thousands of acres of pastures, scrub brush, and forest land — plus nearly 60 homes — have been destroyed.

It’s a tragic story that plays out each evening on the nightly news.

Jamie wants to volunteer at a koala/kangaroo rescue facility, but she can’t do that until she finds out if that would violate the terms of our visitors’ visas.

Eucalyptus trees are most often called “gums” here in Australia. The name comes from the fact that they exude a thick, sticky, viscous fluid whenever they suffer a break in their bark.

There may be bigger gums than this magnificent specimen that sits just outside Angaston, but it would be hard to imagine. Just look how insignificant in comparison to the tree Jamie and our friend John are.

Someone pulled out a tape measure and sized up a red tingle eucalyptus — supposedly the world’s largest gum tree — in Western Australia’s Walpole-Nornalup National Park. Its circumference worked out to a tad more than 24 meters (78 feet).

Next time we drive out that way I’m taking my tape measure to see how this one measures up.

I don’t know why, but the Aussie accents in this TV commercial absolutely crack us up.

In case you were wondering, Hungry Jack’s is the Aussie version of Burger King. Hence the name Whoppah!

Merry Christmas from the Land of Oz. We don’t know the story behind the tradition of wearing paper crowns at Christmas dinner, but wear them everyone does. Perhaps it has to do with the Prince of Peace? Just a wild, off the top of the head guess.

Yes, we have a Christmas tree in our little cottage. Christmas has depressed me ever since my favorite uncle died on the way home from Christmas at our house. But Jamie loves it, so…

Merry Christmas to all our friends in the United States, Australia, and other far flung spots around the globe.

Hey, you northern hemisphere folks, remember that the seasons are reversed down here. It’s winter there, summer here.

We had a record high December temperature today (111 degrees Farenheit) and it’s supposed to be even hotter tomorrow.

As they say in Australianese, “It’s a scorch-uhhh.”

Nevertheless, we had a busy day today. Ken and Sue and grandson Parker dropped in for a few minutes this morning. Then we popped over and had cool, refreshing beverages with neighbors John, Margaret and Scotty. Jamie followed that up with a pedicure, I went Christmas shopping, and then we went to lunch.

Then we came home, rolled down the blinds, cranked up the air conditioning and took it easy.

TODAY’S UPDATE: 112 degrees at 3:59 pm, torrential rain at 4:59 pm. Jamie and I went out onto the back porch to watch the downpour and the sudden drop in temperature was palpable. God, I love Australian weather. It makes Texas weather look so predictable.

They always say the three most important words in real estate are “Location. Location. Location.” In Kalgoorlie, the three most important words in real estate have always been “Gold. Gold. Gold.”

The town sits 370 hot, dry, dusty kilometers miles Northeast of Perth, right at the end of the Great Eastern Highway.

It was founded back in 1889 during one of Australia’s many gold rushes. But the crazy thing is, the gold rush has never ended. They’re still pulling gold out of The Super Pit, the world’s largest open pit mine, and now they’re using newly-developed processes to go back and extract more gold out of all that dirt they’ve hauled out of the mine over the last hundred years.

If it weren’t for gold, there would have been no reason for Kalgoorlie and its remarkable architecture to exist.

Thirty-eight kilometers northwest of Kalgoorlie lies Kanowna, a wide spot on Western Australia’s Goldfields Highway that’s been home to the Broad Arrow Tavern since 1896.

Holy crap. What an experience.