Keep Aus Day date until we can find a better one
THERE has been some debate on the celebration of Australia Day on January 26 as it was the date the British arrived with prisoners and troops to ensure they could start a new colony.
On that day the land they settled was not Australia but known as New South Wales. This was because the eastern part of Australia discovered by Captain Cook was known as New South Wales. The western part of the continent was known as New Holland.
There was no proof that Australia was one land mass until Captain Matthew Flinders circumnavigated the continent and found there was no break but it was all one continent.
He wanted to call it Terra Australis because early people living north of the equator believed there had to be a goodly lump of land south of the equator to balance the planet and named it Great South Land or Terra Australis Incognita.
While Flinders was in jail in French Mauritius he penned the word Australia in his final report in1804 but was made to change it to Terra Australis by the British Admiralty in 1814. In 1824 the British Admiralty finally accepted the name Australia with pressure from the Governor of New South Wales.
So, we could not have a celebration on January 26 each year until we decide on what date in 1824 Australia actually got its name and celebrate that day and I am sure the Mayor of Palm Island would accept that name as the early people probably did not have a name for the continent as they came from Africa through India.
I met the Mayor of Palm Island in 2003 in Home Hill at a ministerial community meeting and he appeared a bloke who wanted reasonable policies from government that suited his people. GARTH HARRIGAN,
Aitkenvale.