Australia Day – a different name for everyone

Australia Day has many, many meanings for many different people. I have a strong position on it myself, but this is not the place to go too far with that.

There are all sorts of arguments about the date, but I do feel that you cannot change history. The salient fact is that on the evening of January 26, 1788, on the shores of Sydney Harbour Captain Arthur Phillip claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, perfectly legally under the rules of the time.

It is also the date in 1808 of the beginning of the Rum Rebellion, when Governor William Bligh was arrested by Major George Johnston. This followed an evening of great merriment and drinking to celebrate the beginnings of the settlement – the first Australia Day was certainly one to remember.

Of course it was not called “Australia Day” at the time. New South Wales called it Anniversary Day for a long time.

Various colonists held dinners and entertainments to celebrate that anniversary, but the first official celebration was on what became Foundation Day in NSW. There was an extra allocation of meat, a holiday for the ‘public service’ and a 30-gun salute. This was thanks to Governor Lachlan Macquarie. A precedent was set. The 30 guns symbolised the first 30 years.

In 1837 a regatta was part of the program and another precedent was set, still followed today. The Australia Day Regatta on Sydney Harbour is known around the world and is a sight to behold.

A full public holiday was declared in 1838, the 50th anniversary of “Australia” and yet another precedent was set.

Our annual birthday party was taking shape and in 1838 another precedent was set, perhaps unfortunately, when a fireworks display was part of the celebration.

The various states came to share Australia Day on January 26 by a series of different, long and winding roads.

South Australia’s Proclamation Day celebrated its own founding in 1836, when Captain John Hindmarsh read out the proclamation which founded SA’s first government on December 28, 1836.

The day was originally on December 28 but it was moved forward to the 27 to make the Christmas break a three-day break – this is Australia, after all. There was another day called Accession Day to celebrate Edward VII’s accession to the throne. In 1910, January 26 was recognised as Foundation Day and Accession Day ( January 22) was dropped.

In 1888 we celebrated across the nation, as we did in 1938 and 1988. In 1938 the day became an official holiday, though some will tell you there was no Australia Day until 1994. In 1988 Australia Day became “a national public holiday” and the event that gives rise to the 1994 date sometimes quoted as the start of Australia Day was that it was the year when all Australian governments agreed to hold the holiday on the correct date.

Proclamation Day in Western Australia celebrates October 21, 1890, the day that the state became an independent colony, with its own parliament and constitution. The Sandgropers celebrated Eight-Hour Day on the same date and that gradually sent Proclamation Day into the shadows,

Tasmania had Regatta Day in December to celebrate the landing of Abel Tasman. The Hobart Regatta is said to have arisen from this but is held now in late February.

On December 3, 1642 he tried to land for the third time but the winds were ferocious and the Dutch flag was swum ashore and planted by the ship’s carpenter – and so Van Diemen’s Land was named and claimed, but by the Dutch, not by the British.

Victoria celebrated Foundation Day on January 26 until 1931, when it became our state’s Australia Day. At least we started out on the right day. During the Great War an Australia Day was begun as a day to celebrate patriotism and to raise funds to assist injured soldiers, but it seems to have ended when the war did.

1938 saw the Sesquicentenary of the founding of modern Australia 150 years earlier. The national Celebrations Council persuaded the state governments to agree on January 26 as the day to celebrate our nation’s birthday, but in typical Australian fashion pretty much everyone celebrated the day on the Monday nearest, so the holiday would make a long weekend. Ah, Australia, the land of the long weekend.

New South Wales was the holdout, celebrating on the actual day, a Wednesday. It was not until 1946 that the state and federal governments agreed to celebrate on the one day – and NSW agreed to move its holiday to the same Monday as the others.

Queensland has Queensland Day to celebrate the day when Queen Victoria agreed that “Moreton Bay” should become a separate colony – I understand that it was to be Cooksland but the good Queen Victoria had her own views on that. I’ve just heard about that.

It was 1994 before the various governments were able to agree to shift the day to the actual date, January 26.

The day was also called ANA Day, Australian Natives Association Day, at times. The ANA held views that are regarded by many as offensive, including the White Australia Policy. Others agree, and agreed in the past, where that debate belongs. I make no comment.

Nor do I make any comment on Indigenous people and their supporters who call our national day Invasion Day, Day of Mourning or Survival Day.

I’m submitting this story too late for Australia Day. It will have been celebrated, or not, by everyone. I’ve held onto it simply because there is a time of loud political noise around Australia Day where many of us have a say, and perhaps should. Nonetheless, it is a time when we should perhaps consider some of the great things about our country. We need a debate about where we want to go with many things here, but we don’t need any debate to recognise the many migrants who have come here to begin new lives and who have raised their children here, paid their taxes here and genuinely become loyal Australian. This is the great underlying reason to link Australia Day with citizenship ceremonies.

I did not say “New Australians” or “Naturalisation Ceremonies” because those words become somehow wrong. I’m not sure why.

Another thing in which we should take pride is that we are the land of the volunteer, to a degree that surprises many from other countries. Most of us have enough to eat and somewhere to live. The list goes on.

Two anecdotes that have relevance to Australia Day, or at least my view of it. A French policeman once looked at my passport and said “Ah. Australians. The last free people.” In Fortaleza, Brazil, Newton Cipolla said “You’ve just elected a new government and not one person got shot. That is amazing.”

Let’s have all the needed debates, but let’s all be proud of the good things and the good people before us and with us now.