Change the date.

Hi All…welcome back.

Is there a simple solution to the difficult problem of Australia Day?

This is something I found myself pondering in the middle of the night, when ideally I should have been asleep. I don’t for a minute pretend to know what our indigenous Australians feel or think. I’m guessing, like the rest of the population, that there are many diverse ideas and thoughts. But there seems to be a general consensus that January 26 is not in favour.

I have tried to imagine a scenario that would make me feel similar.

A hypothetical.

You have a beautiful home. It originally belonged to your grandparents. Your parents were married in the garden. Every much-loved pet over 4 generations is buried on the grounds. You raised your children here. You remember planting trees (now mature) in the garden. This is not just your home it is your sanctuary, your happy place. Your place of belonging.

Until…A man wearing a hard hat and brandishing a clipboard appears on your doorstep and announces that your property is ‘required’ for a road, a mine, a railway. The reason really makes no difference…you are being dispossessed. You are gutted!

To rub salt into the wound, every year on the anniversary of the day the bulldozers moved in, the townsfolk get together and celebrate their good fortune. You don’t begrudge them their personal happiness…but it feels like you are having your face rubbed in it…and it hurts.

I could be wrong, but this is how I imagine it could feel for lots of our First Nations people…and for others it could be more akin to what the people of Ukraine are experiencing at the moment.

A solution?

We can’t change what has occurred in the past, but we can remove the ‘rub it in you face’ component by changing the date.

Apparently selecting an alternative date has been problematic. My question is, why do we need a specific date? We can (and should) be grateful for what it means to be Australian every day.

Christians in our community have no issue with Easter moving around to the lunar cycle. And the rest of us just go along with, (and enjoy) the associated public holidays.

What is more Australian than a public holiday…and even better if it creates a long weekend.

Let’s remove the date from Australia Day entirely. Let’s just say Oz Day is the third Monday in January. Who cares what the date is? It’s summer and it’s a long weekend!

A chance for everyone to celebrate together.

It was the lovely, family-friendly, inclusive celebrations of the Waratah-Wynyard Council and Somerset Rotary Club that I covered, that got me ruminating on this subject.

I hope you enjoy the pics.

Until next time…be nice to each other.