Australia Day: an awkward first date
This Friday, January 26, is Australia Day, and that means it’s argument week down under. Crack open a tinny and celebrate with a very rare Punk Philatelist Longread!
Australia Day is Australia’s national day. It’s called Australia Day because obviously the names of all the other countries were already taken. Australia Day has been celebrated on many different dates in different regions in different eras, but it’s only since 1994 that it’s been uniformly observed on January 26.
We maybe should’ve thought that one through.
Previously, on Australia…
Quick history lesson. The Australian continent has been home to over 500 nations of Aboriginal Australians for what is now estimated at up to 65,000 years.
One day – specifically January 26, 1788 – the British showed up and established their first outpost in the land (we call it Sydney now). Other British colonies followed, and in 1901, they federated to become the nation you know as Australia.
January 26, 1788, therefore marks the first day of – what to call it? Good question. Colonisation, usurpation, settlement, invasion, occupation, civilisation… political battles rage over the terminology, but the indisputable end result was the dispossession of the indigenous peoples, with enormous disruption to family, culture, and language.
Also, the deaths. The stats are hard to pin down, but likely tens of thousands of the land’s traditional owners were killed – sometimes insidiously, by introduced diseases, but often in conflict, and on too many occasions, through sheer cold-blooded murder. The deaths weren’t all one-way. But the stats aren’t exactly equal.
(Historians are piecing together details of the killings that took place as European occupation expanded. This impressive interactive map compiled by the University of Newcastle is trying to record what we know. Zoom in, pick a dot, and learn. I particularly urge Australian readers to take a look, remembering that this is not ancient history. This has all taken place within the last 230 years.)
How are you doing? OK? Hang in there. I’ll be back to talking about the stamps soon.
