Reflections and Refractions

The ‘which day’ debate regarding Australia Day is puzzling for me personally and seems to be increasingly divisive within our nation. The language and feelings are definitely ramping up. Two sides seem to be marking their lines and boundaries.  Australia Day is a day about which I have spent a lot of time reflecting over the years.

When I was younger, growing up in a southern Sydney suburb, I always embraced, in fact I looked forward to, Australia Day. I probably followed my parents in being a proud Australian. However, the Australia Day celebrations I remember were more a family day, when a large collection of our family would gather together much like at Christmas. There was food for all provided by the women, beer provided by and drunk by the adult men, and much fun and water activity. I always remember the Australia Day holiday as a hot, sunny, fun day. Sometimes we went to the beach, sometimes to a relative’s house. One of my uncles had a speed boat and being towed on a tyre or kick board around the flat water in front of his house was a highlight, if we went to his place. I embarrassingly remember one day when I slipped off the board slightly and the rushing water filled my bathers and ripped them off – not a happy experience for an 11-year old having to get back to the boat ramp in front of all the female cousins with only a wet towel for protection.

I remember numerous trips with my parents and school to Kurnell to see where Captain Cook landed on the shores of Botany Bay, and there were several primary school excursions to Circular Quay to see Sydney Cove where Arthur Phillip anchored the first fleet. We were told about convicts setting up the camp of tents by the shores of the Tank Stream which provided fresh water to the first colonists, and about how tough it was for these early settlers.  What was conspicuously absent, or at least I don’t have memory of hearing any, were lessons on the Aboriginal interaction with the colonists, nor any instruction in aboriginal culture and identity.  I remember feeling, early on in my life, that aboriginals were to be avoided, and that they were generally dirty people that didn’t work and frequently went walk-about.  Obviously, this was quite wrong, but I wasn’t born with those feelings and impressions. They came from elsewhere and were dominant enough to be the impressions that my early school-age experience left me with.

As I grew up I learnt more about aboriginal culture and history, mostly independently through reading myself, and have, since my early twenties, felt badly, sad perhaps, about their story.  I became increasingly interested in their dream-time stories and how much in common those stories have with Christian thinking. Try and get hold of the Wiradjuri – central NSW – story of how the kangaroo got its pouch, a story about meeting a stranger in need and both welcoming and assisting them at potential cost to yourself. The similarity between this story and the idea that in every stranger we potentially meet Christ, and the subsequent responsibility to treat that stranger with both respect and hospitality, is both remarkable and profound. As well as having a lot to say about white people’s treatment of aboriginal people, it also is a mirror we should use in reflecting on successive (left and right) governments’ treatment of asylum seekers.

Over the years I formed the view that Australia Day should not be celebrated as it provides offence to a percentage of our population. Rather than the pre-1967 less-than-human indigenous population presented to me in my younger years, through my own experience, I have found aboriginal people to be a rational, intelligent and civilized mob who have survived in a harsh land for thousands of years. They have both earnt and deserve respect, and their knowledge and culture should be learnt, valued and embraced. To celebrate the day on which they were relegated to nobodies and on which the invasion of their lands began, seemed to be rubbing salt into an already gaping wound. So, for 30 years at least, I have not celebrated Australia Day, preferring to spend the day quietly reflecting on the injustice done to the aboriginal people or just using the time to catch up on anything that needed catching up on, largely ignoring the day completely.

In recent years, I have begun to hear more and more Aboriginal people, commentators and leaders say that the date shouldn’t be changed. It doesn’t matter what date is celebrated; it will not change the fact that a country that was previously occupied has been invaded and gradually taken over by a people who, in general, neither recognised nor respected the original inhabitants. What matters more to these indigenous leaders and representatives is the fact that injustices continue to be perpetuated. Aboriginal people in general still have around a 20-year gap in life expectancy compared to white Australians. Aboriginal people continue to struggle with both education and employment opportunities. There are little services provided to aboriginal people who choose to remain in their traditional country. Those who choose, or are forced, to move to larger towns fail to find the opportunities that their white masters promised, resulting in poor living conditions, homelessness, alcoholism and comparative incarceration rates that defy belief.  Modern Incarceration of aboriginal and removal of aboriginal people away from their families and traditional country, for seemingly minor-ish offences seems to be strangely familiar with the plight of the convicts some 240 years ago who were incarcerated and transported for seemingly minor offences. One of my own ancestors was transported to Sydney for seven years for apparently stealing a handkerchief, despite protesting his innocence. The punishment was unjustified then and it is unjustified now.

This alternative voice seems to be growing, becoming more representative and seems to be presenting a more rational, intelligent and civilised response to losing their lands. ‘I don’t care what date we celebrate Australia on; I just want justice for my people’ is an expression of frustration which is both justified and growing in intensity.

Last year’s 2017 Australia Day saw me, for the first time in many years, choosing reluctantly to celebrate Australia Day, but not in the family way of my youth, nor in the more nationalistic way it is celebrated around the country with large crowds, snags and fireworks. Instead, I went to a Eucharist Celebration at my local Anglican church. The service included a reflection on what it means to be Australian, and it paid due homage to the traditional owners of the land on which the church and surrounding suburbs are built. It also included prayers for both compassion and justice for aboriginal people. It was, I thought, a fitting way to celebrate being Australian – recognising both the achievement and the pains of the past, recognising the imperfections that exist in the present, but most importantly embracing hope for the future. I will be doing the same again this year.

I am of the opinion, quite strongly of the opinion now, that trying to change the date is a waste of both time and energy. I feel that people who seek a justice of sorts by changing the date will achieve little. They would do better spending their energy on correcting the injustices of the present. Let’s really recognise, respect and embrace the gifts of culture and knowledge of the land that aboriginal people can offer. Let’s really push for a better understanding of the problems facing aboriginal people today and let’s really push for change that makes aboriginal people truly equal, not just in the pre-ambled words of the constitution, but in life and in living. Let’s change the way we think.

Former Australian cricketer Glenn McGrath, after losing his wife to breast cancer has been raising money to support specialist nurses in regional Australia to support those many other women who suffer from this hideous disease. At the recent Sydney 2018 Ashes Test, the McGrath foundation raised over $1.3 million to provide 10 more breast care nurses for a year. Imagine how many doctors, nurses, educators and other services we could provide on a yearly basis to aboriginal communities, if governments and councils around Australia eliminated, say, fireworks from Australia Day celebrations and donated the millions spent on this frivolous and wasteful activity to a foundation which provided services to Aboriginal Communities. We don’t have to stop celebrating Australia Day, but maybe tweak the celebrations a bit.

By changing the way we think, by choosing to embrace the aboriginal people instead of incarcerating them, by improving their health and education outcomes on a daily basis via an Australia Day gift, perhaps there would be no need to talk of the change date of celebration. Perhaps then, it would be a day which truly celebrated the diversity and richness of an Australia which embraced all its inhabitants, and in years to come, future generations of Australians would simply wonder what all the fuss was about.