If he was there how his royal toe will have tapped to the miscellany of versions of Waltzing Matilda played by the Royal Military College Band. There were hectic versions, jaunty versions, jazz, tango and everything but hiphop versions.

What a tragedy that it is not our national anthem. Quite apart from it being a national song of great social and political import its (best known) tune is a versatile melody that can be arranged in umpteen ways. Beethoven, who wrote a famous Seven Variations on 'God Save The King' would have had a field day with the possibilities of Waltzing Matilda.

Other fine musical moments on Monday included an introduction to the citizenship events of the morning by Eric Bogle (a migrant, he became a citizen in 1969) singing his Shelter. His heartfelt secular hymn to Australia is a tear-jerker and sure enough an unmanly tear fell on to my notebook's page with an audible splat.

And, alas, my thoughts, and perhaps Bogle's too (for like your columnist he has a bit of a bleeding heart) drifted away to Vanuatu and to other detention centres at the ironies of the verse:

To the homeless and the hungry,
may we always open doors.
May the restless and the weary find safe harbour on
our shores.

Perhaps, but we doubt it very much, the thoughts of the occasion's guest of honour the prime minister, too, flew away to Vanuatu at that moment.

Earlier, his hair turned prematurely reddish-brown by the cares of office including that morning's public derision over his decision to make Prince Philip a knight, there'd been another fine musical interlude during his inspection of the Australian Federation Guard. The RMC band's choice of music for this transaction was a brace of famous convict ballads. What a contrast Monday's 25 happy souls, becoming Australians by choice (the prime minister congratulated them that "All of you have voted, quite literally with your feet, to become Australians") made with the convict wretches hauled here in chains.

One felt very, very happy for the blissful, excited 25. It is a lucky thing, and perhaps even a fine thing to be an Australian, and every citizen there on Monday got a kick out of welcoming the 25 into our embrace. This columnist, on Monday bespattering his notebook over Bogle's sentimental ditty, arrived in Australia almost exactly 50 years ago this week, and so at the moment is sensitised to matters of migration.

Each of Monday's happy 25 was not only able to meet the prime minister but also able to enjoy on the dais before us the limelight of a mini-interview with the personable sports broadcaster Stephanie Brantz, a vision in turquoise. Perhaps some of Monday's new Australians (nationwide 16,000 were promoted to the glory of Australian citizenship) will one day, confused in old age, tell their grandchildren that it was Prime Minister Stefanie Brantz who made their day on January 26, 2015. Their confusion will be understandable for certainly on Monday she seemed a more substantial presence than the blue-tied extreme royalist at her elbow.

What gallumphing cliches we endure on Australia Day! Quite apart from the cliches of expression that bespangled the speeches of the speech-makers (who included either Ben Roberts-Smith VC or lookalike, similarly craggy actor Hugh Jackman convincingly portraying him) there were the cliched events. Will we, one day, get over the boyish silliness of firing cannon and of having jet aircraft rocket over our heads? Moments after the cannonade and the fly-past and in the welcome silence, a magpie warbled somewhere and four corellas flew over us, gibbering to one another. Australian sounds.

Spaniards until Monday the Garrido Yebra family consisting of Marta, her husband Adrian and their small children Lucas and Samuel, were miraculously turned into Australians before our very eyes. Marta and Adrian (they're Canberrans), having just met Tony Abbott and Stephanie Brantz were still in a state of wide-eyed delight when, coming down to earth a little, they met me.

"I was here in Australia in 2007, and visiting CSIRO doing my PhD [chemical engineer Adrian, also Spanish, was here too] and we travelled around," Marta explains.

"We fell in love with the country. We thought how wonderful it would be to grow our family here. There are so many things we love. The landscapes. The people. Australia gives us all the ingredients we need to be happy."

The only cloud hanging over their happiness is that one that hovers over almost all migrants to Australia, some of the time. It is the tyranny of the distance from 'home'.

"That is the only thing, the main disadvantage. We wish Australia was closer to Europe. We'd like to be able to go to Spain each year, but ..." Marta laughed, ruefully, for the Spanish and the Australian branches of her family are now going to be faced with some prodigious travelling. Grandparents and grandchildren are worlds apart.

Marta and Adrian, like so many of us so quick to fall in love with sun-illuminated Australia's seductive good looks, must have been touched on Monday by Eric Bogle's Sheltered with its verse that warbles:

I'm drowning in the sunshine as it falls down from the sky.
There's something stirring in my heart, bright colours fill my eyes.
It's from here to the far horizon your beauty does unfold,
And oh!, you look so lovely, dressed in green and gold.