Political Correctness

He probably just has a different notion of what Australia is or could be to you. Not sure that constitutes hatred.

Do me a favour.
Quote the most positive thing he has to say about Australia or Australians from that article.
Just one sentence is fine.

Edit: Even what it could be.

I havenā€™t mentioned it this time, because to me itā€™s old ground.
Iā€™ve said it many, many times overā€¦at least three years, as long as this has been a thing.

His style is part satire. It reads to me like a relatively light hearted, albeit informative, quick history of settlement. Most accounts of settlement, or invasion if you use that word, are farking grim.

Are we meant to remember all of your opinions?

How the hell is it informative?
Never mind the ā€˜allegedlysā€™, where is the minor fact that one of the great nations of the world was built from scratch in a hostile environment with no frigginā€™ skills?

Is that somehow not worthy of mention?

But, maybe orgies, I guess.
Again, something positive to say about Australia.
Anything.
Anything at all.

Thatā€™s not the piece he was writing. You want a different piece and you can find it easily. As for informative, thereā€™s a lot of information in the piece, and Iā€™m pretty sure a hell of a lot of people arenā€™t familiar with it. Information, facts, dates = informative.

Take a break.

I expected a piece about Australia Day and possibly Australian history.
Which that was not.
It was a great big piece of wank that offered no solutions and contained nothing but slurs.

Frigginā€™ maybe orgies ffsā€¦

Whereā€™s the ā€œno skillsā€ coming from?
If you want to keep Jan 26, you canā€™t then ignore the significant positive impact of the worldā€™s biggest superpower on building the joint.
Since we were, at that point, just one more outpost, under their rule, under their flag.

Iā€™d argue itā€™s a big part of why we should change the date, btw.
Celebrate the birth of Australia, not England claiming the land.

It comes from Australiaā€™s first settlers being grossly unprepared and untrained.

Edit: I honestly donā€™t understand your point about the rest. Is that somehow a problem?
Not having a go, just donā€™t get it.

It literally celebrates NSW becoming a prison.

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Again, probably take a break. Thereā€™s plenty about both of those things, and as I said itā€™s part satire and irreverent. You know, like how us Aussies are all delightful scallywags who leer at authority and and have egalitarian impulses sewn into our fibres. Except we farking donā€™t. Weā€™re just lucky to be born here and we should be kinder for that reason.

ā€œI have no childhood memories of Australia Day. In the 1970s it just wasnā€™t that important.

There might be a holiday, or not, depending on which state you lived in. But there was none of the compulsory nationalism that nowadays finds its ugliest expression in pumped-up bogans proudly inked with Southern Cross tattoos and wearing the flag as a super hero cape.

Even the Bicentennial in 1988 was not enough for all the states and territories to agree on a common public holiday. That didnā€™t happen until 1994.

No, Australia Day for Generation X was that last slow, beery burp of summer. One final indulgence before heading back to work or study for real. I seem to recall there was a committee appointed to encourage a more diligent observance of the national day.

The problem might have been that, for most of white settlement, January 26 was considered of little relevance to anyone outside of NSW. Each colony had its own anniversary of foundation, and even after 1901 each state tended to mark that date as the start of its particular creation myth.

Even in Sydney, the 26th was not a rock-solid historical waypoint. It simply marked the day on which the last of the First Fleet ships managed to fight their way through squalls and headwinds, out of Botany Bay and into Port Jackson. Someone ran a flag up a pole, the marines fired off a couple of muskets and, according to possibly dubious legend, the convicts and sailors all got roaring drunk and had an orgy.

The colony was formally established later, on February 7, with the reading of the Kingā€™s proclamation. Even the plaque that marks where the British first planted their flag in NSW, a memorial that sits ā€“ appropriately enough ā€“ outside a pub, isnā€™t accurate. The shoreline was further inland at that time.

For most of white settlement, January 26 was considered of little relevance to anyone outside of NSW.

The commemoration of January 26 was long a private affair. But it might have contributed to one of the first real public crises in the early colony, exactly 20 years after the alleged foundational orgy.

In 1808, on the night of January 25, officers of the Rum Corps gathered to bend their elbows and toast the coming of the Crown to the antipodes. The next morning, sore of head and foul of mood, they launched a coup against Governor William Bligh.

The majority of Australians who donā€™t realise theyā€™re celebrating the seizure of the continent in the name of mad King George ā€“ rather than how super-awesome we are ā€“ probably hadnā€™t realised theyā€™re also ripping the top off a cold one in memory of a military junta that usurped the legal authority of the colony on the same confused, contested date.

That committee, I vaguely recall ā€“ the improvers and do-gooders trying to patriot-shame everyone into remembering that Australia Day was about more than one last ā– ā– ā– ā– -up for the summer ā€“ had its own antecedents in another committee established in 1915 to encourage the celebration of the 26th as Australia Day.

This, too, had an ulterior motive, however. With the Commonwealth at war as a federated nation for the first time, Canberra needed money. The committee settled on July 30 as the new date of Australia Day, and tied celebrations to fund-raising activities for the war effort. The following year the date moved to July 28.

There is nothing sacred about the current date of January 26. Before the Hawke government lavished a fortune on the Bicentennial, the 26th was an unremarkable public holiday, probably less contested than now because our investment in it was so much smaller.

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First English settlers, I presume you mean.

And yes, maybe they were. But again, itā€™s you that wants our national day to celebrate England deciding this continent was just good enough to be a jail.

Not like England couldnā€™t have sent good people if theyā€™d wanted. They did this all over the world.

Or you could post the whole terrible thing, sure.

Iā€™m fine, btw.
Although I appreciate your concern.

Itā€™s our actual history.
I donā€™t shy away from that.

And yes, I meant first English settlers.
If you want to describe for me the experiences of the first native settlers that you were perhaps confused with, then Iā€™m all ears.

Itā€™s part of our actual history. A small part.

Weā€™ve now been our own thing (definitely 1901-2019, plus arguably cf 60,000BCE - 1777) for almost as long as we were just a bit of England (1778-1900). And you want to celebrate the just-a-bit-of-England bit.

And I really think the ā€œwell go on, tell meā€ doesnā€™t perhaps read how you meant it. Given the 150 odd years of displacement, theft and genocide predicated on ā€œterra nulliusā€, which certainly tried to argue oral history didnā€™t count.

Iā€™m ashamed at how little I know. But itā€™s certainly real history, and really worth celebrating.

I said the first native Australian settlers.

And yes, there are two seperate, connected, Australian histories.

Iā€™m interested to see how anyone can make 60/70k years go into 230 and be the same thing.
Truly.

Edit: Iā€™m not sure how many times I have to say Iā€™m in favour of celebrating indigenous Australian history.
A lot more, apparently.

Iā€™m not having a go at you wimmera, we just have a different read on things. Wasnā€™t meaning to be condescending either, youā€™ve been at this thread heaps is all. Thereā€™s some parallel lines with posters here which probably converge more often than diverge on this.

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They canā€™t!

But Jan 26 really only celebrates the Poms settling, and that came very much at the expense of the indigenous.

I say the best way to go forward is to have a completely different day.

Now that I could support!

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