We improvise, we make do, we get by

There is something beautiful about being Australian that I've never heard successfully described in words, but that's because it's something that's indescribable - it's WHO we are and WHAT we do that defines this beauty, not HOW we're described.

Two perfect examples of this come from the manager of the Pooncarrie hotel, and from a patchwork of images and video of road trips around Australia that have been collated into Triple J's "road trip relay."

The manager of the hotel in Pooncarrie (a town in South-West New South Wales with a population of about 50 people) was telling ABC Open about how when the general store and petrol station closed down, it made life tough for the residents. The entire time he was talking about the towns hardships, he had a smile on his face, and he told the interviewer that his hotel now stocks bread and milk to try and bridge the gap that's been left by the closing down of the general store.

When asked how the town would survive, he said "We improvise, we make do, we get by."

As well as strength in adversity, another intangible beauty of being Australian is how we can find fun in what would ordinarily be a mundane situation. Throwing a mates only pair of shoes onto the branch of a "shoe tree," coming across some wild emus and deciding you are an "Emu whisperer," or perfecting the art of waving to oncoming traffic are the kinds of stories Australians find funny and are captured in the "road trip relay" at: https://open.abc.net.au/features/road-trip-relay-52tb6on#/home. If you have a spare 12 minutes, have a look and consider the beauty of being Australian