Yes, thank you wreeder for your words and accurate description of the "Aussie Kulcha" on Jan 26th.
Also thank you Rob for pointing out that not everyone is "on board" with this celebration, the truth sometimes gets hidden amongst the partying and other "goings on".
I have always been ambivalent towards the day. Yes, I did imbibe on the 26th but did not join in any of the festivities.
History Lesson (for those with the time).
Most countries celebrate their national day on the date they gained independence from an occupying or governing power by either a peaceful proclamation or a war of independence (e.g. 4th July in the USA). Australia gained its independence from Great Britain on January 1st 1901. Not an auspicious date for celebrating independence as we would all be "hungover" from the New Year celebrations.
The date Jan 26th was celebrated in one state, my home state of New South Wales, and was largely ignored by most of the other states until the mid 20th century and only became "universally" accepted by the time of the national Bicentennial on Jan 26th 1988.
The date celebrates the arrival of European colonists in Sydney in the "First Fleet" in 1788. The colonists largely consisted of convicts exiled from England for such heinous crimes as stealing a loaf of bread. They were accompanied by soldiers who quickly developed a well earned reputation for corruption and drunkenness. Many have claimed that these two groups represented the true beginnings of the "Australian Character".
To add salt to the wound, Captain William Bligh, well known for the "Mutiny on the Bounty", was one of our early governors (and he succeeded in annoying everyone in that job as well). Shall I say no more. But unfortunately, there is more.
As Bolivar rightly point out, we have a great deal to be proud of - technological achievements (the Wifi in your home and office is an Aussie invention), scientific, cultural, and of course sporting. But there is a dark stain in our history.
Australia Day, like Columbus Day, represents something very different to many indigenous peoples.
It is the Day of Invasion, the start of the Frontier Wars, dispossession of lands, destruction of culture and language, massacres, slavery and genocide. A little known corner of our nation is the location of the only completely successful genocide of a distinctive human race anywhere in the world - the Tasmanian Aborigines, the Palawa. They were a distinctive people who had been isolated from their mainland cousins for about 8000 years (since the end of the last ice age) and had become so primitive that they had even lost the knowledge of how to make fire. Within 30 or so years of the arrival of colonists on that island in the early 1800s, their population had dropped from an estimated 10,000 to just 47. They had been wiped out by disease and by massacres carried out by farmers, graziers and settlers. The last pure-blood Palawa died in 1905. Other mainland Aboriginal groups also suffered at the hands of the colonists, some who came with a missionary zeal to convert the heathens to Christianity but succeeded only in bringing misery and social destruction.
Hence the ambiguity that I and many others now feel towards the date.
But thank you for your thoughts.
My thoughts.
