Happy birthday to us!

The ShadowLands turns one year young today.

Astoundingly - in more ways than one - we are also expecting to welcome our 100,000th visitor in the early hours of today.

For those of you not familiar with our history, The ShadowLands was born out of the fetid Silence of the Lambs style basement that was the comments section of Tim Blair's old website.

When Tim decided to move his blog to News Limited, where instantaneous commentary and our regular casual vile slander would not be allowed, we commentary folk knew that things would never quite be the same again. During discussions about this move, one commenter by the name of Deborah Leigh said:

But I like it here in Shadowland.

and that's where the name for this blog came from. So thankyou, Deborah, wherever you are.

Others to make the move from commentary to blogland at this point included kae, Paco, and latterly Daddy Dave - a diverse group of outstanding bloggers. Other supporters such as BOAB and Tizonas have been quietly producing excellent original stuff long before we even thought about it.

Thanks also to all our linkers, including of course, Tim Blair who gave us the platform to jump from, Andrew Bolt who has boosted our hit count, as well as many other blogs offering us links and support such as Theo Spark, Small Dead Animals, RWDB (and Dark Roasted Blend, who gave us that way distorted hit count in March).

Thanks also to our stellar cast of contributors including John Butler of the John Butler Trio, Cate Blanchett, and Professor Tim Flannery, just to name three.

I estimate - since I can't be arsed to count - that there have been about 3,000 comments made here - yes, seriously. Extra special heartfelt thanks to all our brave commenters.