Let us rejoice

39 years ago today our family left Tilbury Docks on P&O's SS Orsova to emigrate to Australia. I certainly had no conception of what I would be doing or what life would be like in 2006.
I do not regret in any way the step my family took, though it should be noted that these journeys to the Antipodes were not without cost. I well remember about a decade ago, my mother in her late 70s (no doubt feeling the loss of her peers) saying plaintively to me....Do you think we made a mistake coming to Australia? ......I don't know quite what she would have done if I had said "Yes!". The conversation that followed seemed to suggest that she was preparing to pack up her bags and 'go home'.
Until that point I had never fully appreciated how much I regarded myself as an Australian.
My three children (two of whom have emigrated to Victoria for the weekend) are 4th generation Australians on the other side. Their great-great grandfather Daniel arrived at Port Adelaide with his parents and 3 other young siblings in the 1860s. They promptly pushed a cart from the Port to McLaren Vale (about 40 kms I suppose) and settled there for a while before moving to the Wimmera. That family (like all families over time) is now vast and far flung. It is the nature of our country.
In a week when there has been a lot of rubbish talked about what Australia might become (see Dana Vaile's greatest hits) I am really grateful that I am part of a multi-complex society, bound together not by where we came from, but by what we are striving to become. Is that too pie!!