Australia Day What Does It Mean To You?

I am asking what does everybody on the forum think Australia Day represents?
For me Australia day  does not represent when we set foot on this country, it represents all of our achievements that have pushed us forward from the days we were living in England, Ireland mostly in poverty and with our children working the coal mines and the days when a man or woman could be flogged for stealing a slice of bread and from the days when the jails were filled with people who committed petty crimes and from the days that you could have a bucket of piss and crap tipped onto you as you walked down a filthy street in London or one of the local villages

Australia Day honours the achievements and sacrifices of the great explorers who traversed the oceans and lands often in the most horrendous conditions in search of a better life for everybody.
Australia day reminds me of the gold miners who dug down with picks and shovels to  great depths in the ground chasing the elusive metal .It reminds me of Sidney Kidman who arrived here with sixpence in his pocket and ended up owning almost all of NSW and established international trade in beef.( in truth nobody owns this or any other land, it has been  here long before humans existed. To the best of my knowledge God did not sell it to anybody).
It reminds me of Dr Flynn of the Inland, of Sturt and Burke and wills, of Blaxland Wentworth and Lawson who with local aboriginal help, found a way across the Blue Mountains.

Australia day is a day when we celebrate our explorers, our achievements and our heros from the beginning until now. It is our day of celebration.and it has zero to do with anybody else.
The Aborigines have their heros and special days of celebration. We neither want or need to take part in any of those celebrations  and we most definitely do not try to put a stop to them.

We did not invade this country, We did not arrive with an invading army; we arrived here the same way all of the differing Aboriginal racial and cultural groups did. From other lands across the seas.

It was not just the English and Irish who seemed to think that they could claim a country simply by sticking a pole with a bit of rag on it in the ground and mouthing a few stupid words. The dutch, The Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Africans, the Egyptians. Every nationality that has sailed the earth,s oceans have claimed land rights in this manner.

The thing about my ancestors history that I am ashamed of, which goes way back to Viking days and beyond is that simple fact of poking a pole with a bit of rag on it into the ground and some megalomaniac clown saying "I claim this land in the name off"..........whatever.   Irrespective of who was already living there. I have to admit that that  has always bothered  me.

But what can we do? It is the way of the human being. We cannot pack up and go back to where we came from because Australia is where I came from I am 5th generation. If we say to the Aborigines "Ok the land is yours we are all leaving you can have the entire country back, good luck see ya around the traps one day....What would be the result of that??

adrian ss wrote:"Ok the land is yours we are all leaving you can have the entire country back, good luck see ya around the traps one day....What would be the result of that??

and by that you mean, give it back the way we found it??? I reckon they would say please don't go.

What a good post Adrian, but I doubt you will get many replies from the people to whom you mainly addressed it.
I hear enough protest from ones who are neither one breed or another as they are evicted from a pub, not satisfied with ejecting the last 2 hours of consumption over the carpet but roundly and profanely abusing those who would be trying to assist.

For me, Australia day has another connection. As a child, my family immigrated to Australia in 1949 to make a new post war life settling in fairly remote bushland in East Gippsland Victoria.

Time went on, my sister and I grew and matured, our parents worked hard and aged. My parents, now fairly long gone but well remembered, were very happy to live life in their remote bush haven, phone connected much later and never connected to the electricity grid.
Nor did they have any inclination to take a holiday "back home" or become Australian Citizens. They simply enjoyed what Australia had offered them, accepted and made suitable contributions back into society as became available.
I think they were good Aussies too.

My sister, still living in the same area is also a happy expat Pom putting back into the society which has so accepted her and her contributions.
Another good de facto Aussie.

Me?... Well hopefully my career is not quite over yet but grandfather time is rapidly catching up. I was fortunate to have some tertiary education which led me into very interesting work opportunities within engineering disciplines. There were marriages too with kids, then extended families with more kids when I realised that here I was, although making contributions also adding to the possibility that the country would be supporting my progeny without me being a True Aussie!

So 20 years ago this year I signed my allegiance to the Crown (to which I already had allegiance to) but henceforth a True Blue article of the country.
Still a dual national, but not going to worry about that, to old to be a polly
mike

Thanks Dave and Mike.
You may be right but it would be good to read what others who know our true history have to say about the migration of the Irish and the English to Australia and what they found when they arrived here. Remember it was not originally a migration it was about finding somewhere to dump Englands criminals that were spilling out of over filled jails but the whole game changed when gold,lead and silver and copper and good grazing pastures were found,

The whole story is very complex and portrays a complete misunderstanding of what the aborigines thought of land ownership as compared to what the white mans view was and that was when the real trouble started.

Sorry Adrian, but I had to modify your post a little. I cannot allow any form of cultural bias/discrimination, to proceed on this forum.

Cheers Management.

No problems Kon. I actually cannot find where you altered my post script.
I thought I wrote an equally balanced article stating facts without bias one way or the other.
Anyway I doubt that the post will attract much attention, but if it does look like going off the rails feel free to delete the entire thing.

Shows how doddery I am becoming Aye


Oh yes now I see.what was deleted.
I

Great post Adrian, and I can really relate to it, although I can still understand how some see it as invasion day. I don't really dig all this stuff about draping ourselves in flags. When I see some of the idiots who do drape themselves in flags, I cringe. I hate the politicians who whip up patriotic fervor to serve their own divisive purposes, and the idiots who fall for it.
Let's not forget where 'patriotism' can lead to, when fools follow politicians into mad wars that we really should be smart enough to avoid.

Yes Reg I also wonder about some of those so called patriotic protesters. They don't fit my impression of what it is to be Australian. They behave like a bunch of trouble makers paid to cause disruption.