Today Australia Day, the country’s official national holiday. It marks the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in New South Wales and raising of Great Britain’s Union Flag by on January 26, 1788. It is meant to be a unifying patriotic occasion like American Independence Day, the French fête nationale (Bastille Day) or Mexico’s Diez y Seis de septiembre. But not everyone is on board for the celebration.
The First Fleet of 11 ships was sent by the British Admiralty from England to New Holland to establish a new colony. After being unable to land at Botany Bay the ships finally made a safe landing at Port Jackson and designated the spot Sydney Cove in honor of Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney. The formal establishment of the Colony of New South Wales took place a few days later on February 7 vesting of all land in the reigning monarch King George III.
Captain Arthur Phillip raised the Union Jack at Sydney Cove in New South Wales.
But this was no plantation of pioneers and settlers like most of the former American colonies, or corporate grant like the East India or Hudson Bay Companies. This one was to be a penal colony. Most of the hundreds of new residents were convicted of crimes in England, some as petty as stealing a handkerchief with sentences of 5 to 7 years hard labor for the Crown. The rest were military and naval personnel, guards, and bureaucrats. The convicts had precious little freedom and were subject to brutal physical punishment for minor offences or daring to defy authority in some way.
Not much was made of the date until 1808 when emancipated convicts in New South Wales first “celebrated their love of the land they lived in” with drinking and merriment. By 1817 celebrations of First Landing Day or Foundation Day had grown to include more formal dinners of the ruling elite. The following year on the 30th anniversary of the landing Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the day with the first official celebration—a holiday for all government workers, granting each an extra allowance of “one pound of fresh meat”, and ordered a 30-gun salute at Dawes Point.
In 1838 the tradition of the annual Sydney Regatta began featuring boat races in several classes from fishing skiffs to first class sailing vessels. Some of the celebrations had gained an air of elitism, with the United Australians dinner being limited to those born in Australia. Hostility to immigrants and to aboriginal natives was fast becoming a major theme.
Through mid-century it remained confined to New South Wales. Other colonies celebrated their own foundation days. The decision to mark the occasion of the First Fleet’s arrival in was first made outside NSW by the Australian Natives’ Association (ANA), a group of white “native-born” middle-class men formed in Victoria in 1871. They dubbed it ANA Day.
For the centennial in 1888, all colonial capitals except Adelaide celebrated Anniversary Day. In 1910, South Australia adopted January 26 as Foundation Day, to replace another holiday known as Accession Day, which had been held on January 22 to mark the accession to the throne of King Edward VII, who died that year.
The first national Australia Day, however, was not celebrated on January 26. From 1914 to 1918 it was celebrated in July to raise money to support troops in The Great War, raise patriotism, and challenge anti-war and conscription activities by Socialists and the radical Labor movement including the Australian Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
After the war the movement to switch Australia Day for January 26 was slowed by popular Anzac Day on April 25. By 1935, however all states of Australia were celebrating January 26 as Australia Day, but it was still called Foundation Day in New South Wales. Once again the patriotic holiday was used to rally opposition to the militant labor movement during the world-wide Depression.
The same year it was also a declared a Day of Mourning by the Aborigines Progressive Association and the Australian Aborigines League as a protest against the “Whiteman’s seizure of our country. That opposition has continued and intensified and is now marked by demonstrations and protest.
In 1946 in the wake of the Second World War and the early dawning of the Red Scare that would affect Australia as it did in America, the Commonwealth and state governments agreed to unify the celebrations on January 26 as Australia Day although the public holiday was instead taken on the Monday closest to the anniversary for a three day weekend.
After the Nationality and Citizenship Act came into effect on January 26, 1949 created Australian citizenship for the first time citizenship ceremonies became an important part of the celebration—an important departure for the nativist sympathy of earlier observations. Previously, the government-approved residents of Australia had only been British nationals; now they had both Australian and British nationality. The Australian of the Year awards and the Australia Day Honours (introduced in 1975) are also an important part of the celebrations.
In 1994 all states and territories began to celebrate a unified public holiday on January 26 regardless of the day of the week for the first time.
There was a peak of public support and participation around the 1998 Bicentenary, but Australia Day popularity has steadily declined in the 21st Century. Polling by Essential Media since 2015 suggests that the number of people celebrating Australia Day is declining, indicating a shift in attitudes. In 2019, 40% celebrated the day; in 2020, 34%. In 2021 it was down to 29%, and in that year, 53% said that they were treating the day as just a public holiday.
So many Australians may throw another shrimp on the barbie today grateful for a day off work but letting chest-beating patriotism slide.
No comments:
Post a Comment