Advance Australia Where?

Australia Day

“Happy Australia Day”, celebrating 223 years since convicts first landed on these shores.

Most countries celebrate their national day on the anniversary of their independence from the yoke of colonialisation and other tyrannies. Australia celebrates its national day on the 26th January to commemorate the day in 1788 when colonisation was imposed on the indigenous people who lived here.

Although, in fairness, the people on those 11 boats could be forgiven for thinking there was nobody here to colonise. Captain Cook had called the country “Terra Nulis”, even though a few spears had been chucked at him when he landed in Botany Bay. That was in August, which is winter here, which might explain why the dead white men who picked the holiday went for the criminal coming, because it happened in summer.

I spent this year’s Australia Day in Adelaide, a city that shows all the signs of perfect town planning. Unfortunately, you can’t plan culture and history and it does have a feel of been taken out of the box and assembled like a piece of IKEA furniture. I told someone I was planning to spend four days in South Australia and he advised that I should spend two of these in Adelaide because “I’d see everything there was to see and never have to do it again”.

In fairness it was much better than that. It seems to have more Indians than the Mumbai central train station at rush hour. This meant that I could indulge in my delight for curry. Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit dicky after a butter chicken and Nan bread. As my mother used to say about onions, “I like them, but the wee bastards don’t like me”. I think it’s because you can’t find a decent curry in Melbourne. Adelaide, on the other hand, provided a meal that sat in my stomach like a sleeping lamb.

Its also hard to complain about a city that has proper ocean beaches at the end of a tram line and nestles underneath rolling hills that provide some of the best wine in the world.

It seems that every Australian town and city has a parade on Australia, in much the same way as Ireland does on St Patrick’s Day. The sun tends to shine in Australia though, which I always think is a big plus in the parade stakes. In Ireland on 17th March, you are as likely to face rain as you are to trip over 14 year olds on their rights of passage drinking session. My memories of Irish St. Patricks Day parades are shivering in an ill-fitting scouts uniform while marching behind an exhaust chugging fire engine or wearing my Gaelic football outfit while passing a ball to another freezing companion on the back of a float (a skill I was never able to replicate on the pitch incidentally).

The Adelaide parade had decided to honour all ethnic groups that immigrated to the City. South Australia has large German and Polish communities and they added most of the colour to the proceedings. I was particularly impressed with the South Vietnamese contingent. Apart from the fact that they were boldly ignoring the fact that there is no “South” in Vietnam anymore, they were proudly wearing the same uniforms they had worn when they scrambled aboard the last choppers out of Saigon in 1975.

It seemed a wonderfully multi cultural event, recognising all that is great about Australia. The people who came here and the welcome they received.

That night we headed down to the beach to watch the sunset. The other thing that happens on Australia Day is that anyone over 14 and under 30 finds a way of wearing the national flag (bras and shorts are particular favourites) or draping themselves in the flag like a Spanish matador with his cape.

I find this a little unsettling to be honest, not least because when I see it, all I notice is the large Union Jack in the corner. Call me an unreconstructed old bigot, but can’t they come up with something a little more local than a piece of cloth most famous for being planted in lots of places that it ill belongs? Botany Bay being one of them.

But I find this cringe to the mother-country strange in other ways. Australians seem to dislike the English even more than we Irish do. I noticed this during the recent Ashes series, when, in my need to defend those that are attacked, I found myself cheering for the Poms. It was an uncomfortable feeling, made better by the fact that the Poms won and none of my family were watching me.

Australia’s attitude to England was also evident during the recent tennis. It’s well known that Andy Murray is British in the London based media until he loses, when he reverts to being Scottish. The opposite applies here. Murray is portrayed as Scottish in the Australian media when he is doing well. But come Sunday night when he choked like a victim of the Boston strangler, he suddenly became British.

So why, you might ask, do they insist on having the Union Jack in their flag? Every year at this time, it comes up for debate on talkback radio and in the editorials of liberal newspapers. But nothing will ever change, because inertia is the biggest factor in politics. And besides, those sixteen-year-old girls in the flag bikinis like the way the stars of the Southern Cross tend to nestle around the nipple area and the Union Jack rubs against the part of the body that even Irish republicans would like to wipe it with.

The night was finished off with fireworks. They were nice, but you get fireworks in Australia when ten year olds win a cricket match, so the novelty has kind of worn off.

Perhaps Captain Cook would have enjoyed them when he arrived in 1770. But then, that would have suggested that there were already people here.