The Day That Wasn’t Always There

There’s a day Australia pretends has always been there —

blue flags with the colonisers mark blaring out from the top left corner, long weekends, airbrushed history.

But the truth is stranger, quieter, sharper.

I love this nation. I also grew up with immense respect for its traditional owners and their customs. I didn’t grow up celebrating “Australia Day” every year though as it really never existed in the manner it does now.

And if it did, it wasn’t celebrated in the usual manner considering where I come from - that being a wholly recognised Indigenous community. 

Yet now that I’m older, I understand why, considering the true history of our First Nations people was never taught in school. If it were, we would have learned that:

the date didn’t belong to the nation,

it belonged to the landing,

to the taking,

to the violence that followed,

to the violence that endures,

to the truth nobody wanted to face.

The country didn’t choose 26 January as a day of celebration in 1788.

Or 1888.

Or 1901.

Or even 1938.

The government at the time chose it - officially in 1993,

one year after the courts finally admitted what Indigenous people had always known:

terra nullius was a lie.

How fitting.

The moment the myth cracked,

the country clung tighter to the date it thought defined it.

But this is the timeline (more detailed in the image below):

• The massacre at Waterloo Creek in 1838

• The Day of Mourning in 1938

• The Bicentennial protests in 1988

• Mabo in 1992

• The sudden national agreement in 1993…

…And I think:

of course it divides us.

It was born from division.

A date built on arrival,

held up by denial,

cemented by fear,

challenged by truth.

Australia Day still isn’t a day for all to celebrate as it should be.

It has purposefully been implemented to continue the controlled division, even hatred.

And this; just like the colonisers mark on the southern cross that defines our nations location, needs to change.