Australia Day

Excessive displays of patriotism are not a defining characteristic of the Australian personality.

For the majority of Australians, January 26 - "Australia Day" - is just another public holiday, a straggler from the Christmas break, another day off work on full pay gratefully accepted by the employed, the last hurrah before the reality of the beginning of another year of imposed 5-day-a-week exertion. 

It is the anniversary of the 1788 arrival at Port Jackson of the First Fleet - 11 ships that had departed England with more than 700 convicts in an attempt to ease the overpopulation of English prisons and Thames River prison hulks - to found the penal colony that became the first European settlement in Australia, a settlement that Thomas Keneally appropriately called "The Colony of Thieves".

But for our First Nations people, January 26 is Invasion Day, a day of mourning, symbolizing the forcible dispossession of their sixty thousand year old established society by these entitled invaders who arrogantly claimed ownership of the continent for the English throne.

 

In present-day Australia, official celebrations are held and awards are presented, but nobody gives a fat rat's arse apart from the participants. 

Displays of flag-waving are rare enough to be considered newsworthy, and haven't reappeared since the Cronulla riots of 2005.

The resting state of Australians toward almost anything except sport is casual indifference. 
And sport at the moment means the contrived hit and giggle of "Big Bash Cricket" (to cater for that segment of the population with a short span of attention) and the Australian Open Tennis Tournament (for those who haven't).

The Australian Open provides background  colour and movement on television while the populace gets down to the serious business of inebriation.
It is a fair dinkum Grand Slam event along with Wimbledon, the French Open and the US Open, and the world's best players front up.

But this year, as a special gesture to the host country on its National Day, Diego Schwartzman (whose name, from my limited knowledge of the German language translates to " Blackman"), rose to the occasion and provided an archetypal Australian moment for the fans by having his arse kicked by Dominic Thiem (a compatriot of the world's most infamous white supremacist) on Invasion Day.

For me, Australia Day is a day of shame and sadness and anger.  
Anger at the obscenity of patriotism. 
Anger at the colossal arrogance of  "Terra Nullius".
Anger at the sense of entitlement and the inhumanity of the English invaders.
And anger at the ineradicable scourge of racism.


It is a re-run of the feelings I got as a kid on Anzac Day.
Sadness at the futility of the deaths of so many young men in the name of patriotism, and anger at the con-trick of patriotism, the good-looking sibling of racism.