My jeans are in Australia, but my genes are in Scotland.

         

                                                     

                                                                    Sydney Cove - some time after the arrival of the First Fleet


The English invasion of the Great Southern Land began on 26 January 1788, with the arrival of 11 ships carrying between 750-780 convicts and around 550 crew, soldiers and family members.
It was marked by the raising of the flag of Great Britain at Sydney Cove by Sir Arthur Phillip.

The 26th of January is now the official national day of Australia, a nation-wide public holiday known as Australia Day, but to indigenous Australians (and to a significant proportion of the Australian population who agree with Samuel Johnson's famous pronouncement, made just three years before the fleet's arrival,  that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"), it is a day of mourning for the invasion of their land, and for the beginning of continued oppression of Aboriginal people since that time.

The Poms, and subsequently their descendants, pompously (no pun intended) call this invading armada "The First Fleet", arrogantly, insensibly and insensitively ignoring the fact that south-east Asians crossed the seas some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago to become the founding human population of the great southern land and the ancestors of Australia's Aboriginal people.

Between 1788 and 1842, about 80,000 English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh convicts were transported to New South Wales, approximately 85% male and 15% female.
We are, indeed, as Thomas Keneally put it, the Commonwealth of Thieves.

I am a fifth generation Australian of Scottish, English and Irish descent.
I am frequently moved by the beauty and grandeur of the mountains, the plains, the coastal ranges and the beautiful white beaches of this vast, ancient land in which I was born.
I feel a sense of pride and love, but no sense of belonging. 
This country belongs to its indigenous peoples. Their sense of belonging cannot be gained simply by living here.

Maybe the descendants of those who leave their homeland are forever homeless, condemned to live their lives as strangers in both the land of their birth and the land of their ancestors.