GordonMoyes.com

Six years after the forming of its new national political party, “Family First” is now set to contest the 2011 state election in New South Wales.

When my wife and I first married, we lived with my grandmother in a small cottage in Moonee Ponds, Victoria. Up the road lived our most famous citizen, Dame Edna Everidge who greeted everyone with a flamboyant “Hullo possums.” That is because leafy Melbourne is home to hundreds of thousands of possums, and is known as the possum capital of the world.

Jerusalem is an amazing city, beautiful, historic and for Muslims, Jews and Christians, it is the Holy City – a central place to the world’s three leading faiths; and a magnet for foreign pilgrims. It is also a target for mentally sick people and also the cause of mental illness in otherwise mentally balanced pilgrims.

It was going to be a very hot Saturday so Friday night I watered the garden and gave each of the three vegetable boxes a good soak. The beans, peas, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, kohlrabi, lettuce, onions, and a dozen other kinds of vegetables, are all being picked for our table and evening meal each day.

The other day, for the first time in the 25 years that we have had our acreage on the Central Coast of NSW, I heard a common koel. It didn’t fill me with pleasure. Although found in all areas of northern and eastern Australia, these members of the cuckoo family are migrating further south every year. In fact, in the northern suburbs of Sydney most people regard them as one of the noisiest bird pests of this time of the year.

On the route my wife and I walk early each morning is the front lawn of a neighbour’s house. There we watch every day for the resident Spur-winged Plovers. They are permanent residents in our area.

This week we celebrate Australia Day. There seems a new pride in being Australian. In a way I could not have imagined fifteen years ago when we faced so much media pressure to change our flag, the Australian flag today is flown, waved and worn with pride as never in our history. The Aussie pride was noisily announced during the recent Test matches. Nothing is more dead in our society than that minority that want to change our flag!

In fact, I’ve got more than 20,000 worms! Not in me, but in my worm factory. They are composting worms and some of the most valuable assistants we have in our garden. Their products: worm wee and worm poo – worm castings – are wonderfully nutritious – and are free, and make plants thrive!

I was looking back through my diary a few days ago and the thing that struck me was the deaths of good people in the past year. I thanked God for each one of them.

The 6th January is traditionally Epiphany – the showing forth of the baby Jesus to the Wise men. This comes 12 days after the birth of Jesus, hence the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”