Hello and welcome, to the audience at the Australian Cultural Festival, in this speech, I would like the opportunity to explore the diverse environments that make up the country we live in. It is not an exaggeration to claim that Australians have a strong connection with their natural surroundings, with nearly all major cities lying on our coastlines, sun, surf and sand has become part of our national identity and stands in strong contrast to the vast, arid landscape of the outback.

I could go on and on about how each of our landscapes differ from one another but I think this could be better portrayed in the children’s book, ‘Where the Forest meets the Sea’, by Jeannie Baker. Published in 1987, this book features beautiful, 3D-like illustrations of the Daintree rainforest in Queensland, and follows the story of a boy and his father travelling by boat to an isolated beach that borders a large rainforest. While at the beach, the boy explores the rainforest and pretends that he has travelled back in time, he imagines all the creatures that may have inhabited the very spot where he stands. However, when departing the beach, the boy feels sad, as he worries that when he returns, the rainforest will no longer remain there. The text in this book, despite being uncomplicated, …show more content…
an evoke powerful feelings of sadness and nostalgia through emotive language, this is particularly true when the author uses an omission at the end of the book, which leads us to wonder whether this magical place still remains, or