Increasingly controversial as it is, tomorrow is Australia Day, marking 231 years since the British First Fleet arrived in New South Wales.
Here’s a publication from 1901, announcing the “new” Australian flag.
And things aren’t going to be very comfortable for the official, mostly outdoor events here in Canberra (the capital city), that run over the 25th-26th!
We visited the Rome exhibition at the National Museum of Australia on Sunday afternoon (a tip: go late in the day and you won’t have to wait in a queue for an hour – but there’ll be some fingerprints on all the glass cabinets!).
Here are a few more shots:
The entrance (with me!).
The Emperor Augustus, who looks suspiciously like Vladimir Putin!
And I was SO happy to see they’d labelled Crimea as Ukraine, despite what Russia is currently up to.
A jeep stuck up a tree. From the collection of the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
On the 18th of January, 1951 Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea, just north of Australia, began to erupt.
The worst of the devastation came three days later when a violent blast led to the deaths of some 3000 people, and left more than 5000 homeless.
The following year Australian vulcanologist Tony Taylor was awarded the George Cross for his work during the disaster.
January 1917: A group of women in Leith, Midlothian, Scotland paint the hull of a Royal Navy Motor Launch with anti-fouling paint on a snowy day. First World War.
January 1953: Evelyn Stillwell teaches a ballet class in Sarasota, Florida, USA.
Photographed by Charles Barron.
9th-10th January 1940: Members of the Second Australian Imperial Force boarding ships in Sydney to travel to the Middle East. These soldiers defeated the Italians in North Africa. Second World War.
East German figure skating star Katarina Witt is photographed here on the 9th of January, 1982. She was sixteen years old when the picture was taken.
Witt went on to win both the World and European titles that year. Two years later she won her first of two Winter Olympic gold medals, at the Sarajevo Games.
Today is Christmas Eve by the old calendar, and is still celebrated by millions of people around the world, especially in Eastern Europe.
The 6th of January is also the date of the beginning of Koliada, an ancient Slavic winter festival that predates Christianity. The festival is now incorporated into Christmas festivities.
Koliada in the Mogilev region of Belarus at Christmastime in 1903.
The festival in Lviv, Ukraine.
6th January 1941: A column of Italian soldiers, captured after their defeat by combined Australian and British forces, are marched to an army base after the Battle of Bardia in Libya.
Bardia was the first battle planned and commanded by Australians in the Second World War. Italy was aligned with Nazi Germany in the war.
In Times Gone By... 
