British broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson has praised Australians for their good nature, sense of humour and courageous response to the horrors of the recent floods.
Parkinson, who today became the first non-Australian to deliver the annual Australia Day address, also urged the nation to be prouder of its achievements and stop looking over its shoulder.
"To the outside observer nothing becomes your people more than the way they respond to the horrors of flood and fire," he said.
"In 2009 the bushfires in Victoria, today the floods in Queensland. "It is a reminder to the world of the resilience and the courage of the Australian people.
"It is a reassurance to the rest of us - helpless spectators that we are - to be reminded that such appalling tragedies bring out the best in human nature, demonstrating that the notion of community the principle of being a good neighbour are not slogans but the practical means by which we survive in desperate times."
The cricket-loving miner's son, who has been being a regular visitor to the country for more than 30 years, delivered a humorous and affectionate speech, laden with anecdotes of the Australians he met during his career over more than 40 years.
Parkinson homed in on Australians' lack of snobbery, directness, classlessness and sense of fun.
For a miner's son in a country where the boundaries of class and privilege were sometimes stifling, being with fellow human beings to whom these things meant nothing was wonderful, he said.
He pointed to former prime minister Paul Keating who once put his arm around the Queen and got lambasted for it in the English press as the "Lizard of Oz".
Parkinson defended Keating, saying: "He was simply reaching out in a friendly gesture as one human being to another."
"Here (in Australia) we are all human beings."
Parkinson said it was the classless aspect of Australia that many British love and indeed - with his father's admiration for Australian cricketers - grew up thinking of Australians as "distant cousins".
In his address at the Conservatorium of Music in central Sydney, Parkinson highlighted Australia's progress from a penal colony to the nation it is today.
"The history of this place is a triumph of a few, who by common purpose, and strength and necessity, built a prosperous nation in a remarkably short time and against all the odds," he said.
"In the 30 years I have been visiting Australia, I have seen it shrug off an inferiority complex embodied in the ... cultural cringe to become a self confident nation beholden to no other, a very individual identity, with an economy to envy - particularly if you live in Europe.
"Why do I sense a predilection for self criticism, an assumption that things could be better, a longing for things to improve. "Instead of the nation dancing a jig at its good fortune, I've got a sense of Australians sitting this one out, waiting."
In trying to sum up what he feels about his "second home", Parkinson said it was not stretching imagination to see Australia as one of the "most powerful and progressive nations in the world".
The miracle of Australia was already embedded in its short history.
"Think back 200 years, and look around you now. "Is not what you see miraculous?" Parkinson quit his popular long-running UK talk show in 2007, after a career spanning more than 40 years in television, radio and print.
Among the many Australians to have appeared on the show were Shane Warne, Kylie Minogue, Barry Humphries and Kerry Packer.
