All is Not Lost

I used to use Safari as my browser, and I had collected a nice amount of links about Australia.

Then my Safari got messed up somehow and I thought all my bookmarks were tragically gone.

But it turns out....

Well, I pressed a button on Opera. I actually have NO idea what I did. But it gave me a menu that included importing bookmarks from various browsers.

How cool is that?

So now I have all my old links back!!

Here are some of my favorites:

Learn to Speak Aussie. This site comes from the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. Yikes. I gotta take note of this place. We're going to Canberra, but I didn't put this museum on the schedule yet. Probably should. Oh, back to the site. It's geared for kids. But I think sometimes the best way to learn is to use material geared at children. It's a good place to start at least.

Australian Biography. This site is quite comprehensive and I have to admit, I've only skimmed the surface. It has detailed interviews with various famous Australians. Each one has a short video clip of the interview. I watched those. One day, I need to go back and read the whole thing. The interview that I found most fascinating was of Elizabeth Durack. She's a white woman who pretended to be Aboriginal so she could sell her Aboriginal artwork. The story brings up so many issues: Fraud, cultural identity, artistic freedom, etc.

Famous Australians. This website was very important in my Australian education. It's just a very basic site with links to other sites with biographies of important Australian people.


Simply Australian- Here is a place in America where you can order Aussie food. We've ordered from there twice and were very happy with it. The only problem is they are out of stock a lot. For example, right now they have no Vegemite except for some weird scary tube thing. They also never seem to have my beloved licorice bullets. I was about to say they're good with Tim Tams, but I just checked that and they hardly have anything. Things must be kind of bad for them now. Yikes.

Australian Banknotes-The font/background of this site isn't easy on the eyes, but I like the information on it. It talks about Australian money, and is helpful to us Americans who look at the notes and say "Who is that?"

Aboriginal Timeline-Good site for learning the history of the first Australians.

Australian History-Good site for learning the basics. I think I spent a day on here....or two.

John Ian Wing-This website is beautiful and makes me cry. Go look at it and see if you cry too. Seriously. It gives me goosebumps.

Australian Prime Ministers-Just a basic list kind of site. I find the length of office terms fascinating. It's very different from the USA. There's guys who lasted only 8 days, another one lasted 20 days, and another one just a month. Then you have this Menzies guy in there for 16 years. Very interesting. And here's some trivia for you. Julian McMahon from that scary show Nip/Tuck is the son of a Prime Minister.

Walk Sydney Streets-The best website about Australia ever. This website made me laugh so hard. You have to go here. If I ever fall out of love with Australia, all I need to do is go to the site and I'll fall in love all over again.

Moomba- This is an entry in Snopes.com. It's undetermined if it's true or not. I hope it's true. It's hilarious. Basically, the story goes that in Melbourne they wanted to have a festival. They sought out Aboriginal help in naming the festival. They got "Moomba" which was supposed to mean Let's get together have fun. Rumor has it that the name really means something like Up your butt.

And here's a NEW site that I'm super excited about. Someone commented that I should read the work of Henry Lawson and C.J Dennis. I googled them and it turns out you can read stuff online at Project Gutenberg. I'm very excited.