English: View from the lookout at the town of Meekatharra, Western Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: The Kumarina Roadhouse on the Great Northern Highway, between Meekatharra and Newman, Western Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Locator map for this town within Western Australia, showing position relative to the state’s capital city, Perth. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anniversaries of life’s main events, for those concerned, are like public holidays minus the holiday unfortunately. They trigger memories, and remind us what is important; they are an opportunity to revive our love, our fidelity, our friendships.

Mrs Pop-Star or MPS wasn’t her real name then. That will be confidential. Pop-Star thinks the initials MPS appropriate even back in those good old days. He thinks they stand for “My Personal Secretary”. Certainly she has been all of that for him. Then too it could be said that the abbreviation is “My Partner for Sex”. The less said about that the better, the children think. Mrs Pop-Star is inclined to think her husband treats her like he thinks it stands for “My Personal Slave”. There is more than an element of truth in this.

It is rather remarkable that the day MPS said yes was Australia Day, just 50 years ago. “Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free”, ‘Pop-Star asked me, and married we will be’! We didn’t get to the fifth stanza, but for the record “Advance Australia Fair” has been Australia‘s National Anthem since 1984.

http://www.imagesaustralia.com/australiannationalanthem.htm

Pop-Star had actually popped the question to MPS two years earlier. He thought she would be a pretty good catch. Good looking. Smart and intelligent. A top nursing graduate. Industrious like her mother. Enjoyed a joke like her father, but told better ones. Convivial. She would compensate for all that Pop-Star was not.

MPS didn’t say yes then, but then she didn’t say no either. She just decided to take a position as nurse, cook, bottle- washer, ‘jill’ of all trades, at a school for indiginous Australians at Karalundi, near Meekatharra in the remote outback of Western Australia. Letters were exchanged during the year, which she duly read to the school-kids. They were quite impressed with Pop-Star’s literary skills, but enjoyed the bits at the end most.

MPS must have thought that the suggestion he had made back then was worth accepting before he changed his mind after a 2 year wait. She decided Australia Day was the perfect auspicious occasion for the announcement. Forever afterwards all Australians would join in our celebration January 26.

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