Fall in love with nature, the Australian way

While nature lovers across the world wish all humans to realise the significance of their natural surroundings, many Australians are turning caring for environment as their way of life . Julie Astonis, an Australian housewife in Brisbane city is one such example. She and her communities North Lakes have stood out from hundreds of other communities in the Best Master- planned Community Competition and ranked as Redcliffe's top ten best communities. Even though autumn is approaching Australia's Brisbane in April, one can still watch colourful blooming flowers in Julie's exquisite little garden, as she tells that in her community, "each of us has a beautiful yard". "There has been a deep rooted awareness of environmental protection, from children to elderly people. The whole community takes care of the environment as if they are taking care of the own garden," Julie told Xinhua. Talking about her people's sense of care for environment, Julie said when people in the community take along their dog, they would always carry a garbage bag to deal with the dog's excrement. "In our community, you will never experience the embarrassment of stepping on the dirty waste while you are walking on the grass," said Jolie with a smile. "Taking care of the dog's waste can also help to cultivate children's sense of responsibility!" "Gardening is the most popular club in our community," she says. "A lot of retirees don't just regularly organise gardening lectures, but also personally visit families in the community to provide gardening training." "So can see that flowers continues to blossom in our gardens throughout the year." As to protect water resources, the Australian government has imposed strict irrigation restriction on families, Julie says: "We certainly would not use tap water to irrigate the flowers!" She says almost every family in her community has a huge tank, used to store rainwater, which is later used as the resources of all outdoor water use, including car washing and watering the garden. "This year, we also specifically asked people to connect the water tank with our flush toilets, so they could save the use of tap water," she added. Mentioning their primary school's effort, the school encourages students to do more things; beneficial to the environment, and ask them to write that on a paper to share experience with other students. Though the World Earth Day is round the corner, Julie feels environmental protection should not be marked only a particular day, instead "every day should be Earth Day". In 2009, the 63rd UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to declare April 22 as the World Earth Day.