Labour Weekend a national treasure

Michele A’Court

Last summer (remember summer? It’s my favourite) I had a testy back-andforth with an Australian editor about the correct nomenclature for the holiday we are curently having.

I’d written ‘‘Labour Weekend’’ in a story about a young farmhand who had headed south to put rings on the tails of spring lambs, and fallen in love. The editor had scratched out ‘‘Weekend’’ and written ‘‘Day’’ firmly in the margin.

I was oddly affronted. Labour Day was, in my mind, a subset – precisely one-third – of a glorious holiday properly known as Labour Weekend. It might be true (pfft) that, in other countries, the advent of the eight-hour working day is celebrated on a single date: May 1 in some of the world, September in Canada and the United States, June in Trinidad and Tobago, and all over the shop in different Australian states.

But not here. Here, it takes a whole flaming weekend, mate. First celebrated as a statutory holiday in 1900, it was Monday-ised in 1910 to create a long weekend in the last half of October.

And what a bloody treasure it is. Our first deep breath and long exhale after a plodding winter (cast your mind back to Queen’s Birthday in June to measure the distance) and the most reliable marker of new season’s hope. We plant tomatoes, we pack away woollies, we tail our lambs.

I try to make it count each year, this celebration of a worker’s right to rest and recreation. Though in the years since becoming a parent and simultaneously becoming self-employed (and therefore never really feeling off-the-clock) the observance feels symbolic – specific, if I’m lucky, to these three days.

But I’ve learnt to make a list – like, an actual list – of the things I love to do. It’s easy to forget what makes you happy, right? Last New Year, I sat on a beach and wrote down in a notebook all the things that had brought me joy in 2017 – obvious things, but also some surprises when I thought about it hard. (I also wrote the other kind of list, intending to fold it into an origami boat, set fire to it and send it out to sea, but I think it’s around here somewhere. I won’t look for it now.)

I’m using the good list this Labour Weekend. There will be food, wine, music, silence, extravagant sleep-ins, some strolling around listening to the ocean, maybe drawers tidied and bits of flotsam jettisoned to a bin or a better home. Reading will be from pages only, not screens, and writing will be restricted to a pen. These are my versions of tailing and tomatoes. I hope you are doing yours.

Jeremy Elwood

If you ever find yourself travelling above the Arctic circle (and why wouldn’t you?), you may occasionally come across a human-made stone structure. It could be a single upright stone, or a larger, more carefully constructed formation, likely requiring more than one person to build.

These are inuksuit, built by the peoples of the Artic North, and while there is some debate about what they were originally for, they act as a reference point in a region largely devoid of landmarks and a reminder that other humans have passed this way before, that you are not alone in the desolate cold.

I’ve always loved that idea. That human beings stopped mid-journey to leave a note that essentially says: ‘‘Hey, you! You’re heading the right way and it’ll all be OK.’’ It’s the kind of thing that reminds me that even in some of the harshest environments on the planet, humanity will find a way to reach out and connect. To remember that a shared experience is a grander one, and that noone wants to be (literally) left out in the cold.

Around mid-July, I start looking for similar signs that winter will eventually release its grip and hand over to spring, which in turn will pass the baton on to summer. Like an inuksuk, these signs are few and far between, but they do exist to reassure us that time will indeed pass. Daylight saving is one. Labour Weekend is another.

Labour Weekend feels like the country taking a collective breath after a long winter, and bracing itself for one last push towards year’s end. Even though I don’t often have the day off, it still feels like a brief reprieve, and a reminder that summer is imminent.

It might seem anachronistic to celebrate an eight-hour work day in this time of constant connectivity, where the majority of us find it hard

to log out from the working world. But it’s still important to take a moment for ourselves, in the same way that Samuel Parnell insisted on taking a moment to put down his carpentry tools in 1840, refusing to work longer than those eight hours.

What is it with carpenters and historical movements, by the way?

But I digress.

Labour Weekend is one of the better holidays. You aren’t expected to spend money on presents, family is optional. You don’t need to cater for a crowd unless you want to, but even if you do, the bottle stores are still open. So, enjoy your weekend, and keep an eye out for that pile of stones that tells you you’re getting closer, and the weather is likely going to improve.