While it was disappointing rain and lightning spoiled the Australia Day fireworks at Lake Wendouree on Wednesday night, we must be thankful that the city escaped with little more than a drenching and some minor flooding.

With thousands of people lining the lake's shores, the potential for something worse to happen was always there should lightning have struck a tree.

However, the rain which fell will surely have quenched parched city gardens even if it did little to top up our water storages.

Of concern is that our neighbours in Geelong suffered far more serious flooding, so much so that an SES crew from Ballarat was sent there to bolster the manpower required to attend to the deluge of calls for emergency assistance.

As The Courier reported yesterday, the fireworks at the lake were not cancelled, merely postponed, and it is to be hoped that Ballarat residents will get behind the event when it is rescheduled.

Although it will not be on Australia Day, it will give us another chance to reflect on how fortunate we are, whether native-born or naturalised, to be living in the best country in the world.

Sport in safe hands

AUSTRALIA Day also produced some remarkable sporting performances, notably the nail-biting matches played by Alicia Molik and Lleyton Hewitt at the Australian Open.

While Molik will be bitterly disappointed that she missed beating world number one Lindsay Davenport by a whisker, she - and thousands of tennis fans - will realise that she has arrived in a big way and we can look forward

to future success.

Hewitt, for the second time this week, looked down and out in his match against David Nalbandian but drew on his unbelievable powers of concentration and reserves of fitness to slog it out in a thrilling fifth set which took

the match to four hours in length.

No-one but the harshest Hewitt critics can doubt that we are witness to the career of one of the Australia's greatest players of all time.

And we must not forget the Australian cricketers.

Again, after being on the brink of what could have been an embarrassing collapse, this great team - which, it must be noted, was not at full strength - staged its own fightback to inflict a demoralising defeat on the West Indies.

Australian sport is in good hands.