Another Australia Day. Another divisive polemic about the date, the day, and its meaning. Those who seek to change the date argue that 26 January signifies the beginning of Britain’s invasion of Australia and the violent expropriation of Aboriginal lands.
Those who seek to retain the current Australia Day date often invoke a tradition which parenthesises the uncomfortable details of Australia’s colonial history.
So should the date be changed to help heal the wounds of colonialism and re-make the meaning of Australia Day?
Certainly, 26 January is profoundly symbolic in Australian history. The date marks the arrival of Arthur Phillip’s penal fleet in Port Jackson. In fact, the First Fleet had arrived in Australia on 20 January 1788, but the original site of Botany Bay was deemed unsuitable. So the fleet moved to Sydney Harbour and raised the flag on January 26. The formal arrival ceremony, however, wasn’t held until 7 February.
This ceremony was largely a re-statement of James Cook’s 1770 British claim on the territory he called Australia. That declaration probably took place on 22 August.
We can reasonably say, therefore, that any of these dates could symbolise the inception of the British colonial claim on Australia.
This claim took place within a broader European interest in the ‘Great Southern Land’. The Dutch mariner William Janszoon had already visited Australia in 1606. He had been followed by Spanish, French, and possibly Portuguese explorers.
A French expedition, specifically, claimed the territory in 1772. The French vessel La Perouse sailed into Botany Bay on 24 January, 1788, remaining there for six weeks.
Britain, however, was the first European nation to experiment with a formal occupation. Despite the symbolic inflation of this event, Phillip’s encampment in Sydney Cove was never stated to be the beginnings of a full-scale invasion. The settlement was, at best, tentative.
For example, Phillip’s request for tradesmen and a larger civil administration were rejected by the Home Office.
Settlement
Some historians have argued that the settlement had long-term strategic purposes, mostly to forestall the interest of other European powers. Nevertheless, most of the discussion around the settlement focused on its value as a penal colony.
Industrialisation had created mass poverty, social desperation, and an epidemic of petty crime that strained the British penal system to breaking point. As with other British penal colonies, the Sydney settlement was designed to relieve Britain’s overcrowded jails.
An invasion and mass occupation were never discussed in Arthur Phillip’s instructions. Moreover, the instructions expressed something of a rising mood of British humanism that would ultimately contribute to the abolition of slavery and the significant political reforms of 1832 and 1867.
Modest as it may sound today, this same nascent humanism was inscribed into the revision of Phillip’s instructions. For example, the original term ‘savages’ was replaced by ‘natives’ who must be ‘protected’ and treated with ‘kindness’.
Phillip’s period as colonial administrator largely adhered to these instructions. In fact, the real horrors of colonial rule only began with the arrival of free settlers on 16 January, 1793 – just a few weeks after Arthur’s return to England. This date, more than 26 January, 1788, marks the beginnings of territorial expansion and the violence of invasive occupation.
From left Michael Anderson, Billie Craigie, Bert Williams and Tony Coorey.
Photo by Noel Hazard, courtesy SEARCH Foundation and State Library of NSW.
Day of Mourning
This era of free-settler expansion is marked by massacre, injustice, disease, exclusion, oppression, and cultural degradation.
Through this period, and even after Federation, there is no consensus date to signify an ‘Australia Day’. This changes in 1838 with the decision to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet on 26 January.
In order to counter these celebrations the Australian Aborigines League (AAL) and the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) declared this date The Day of Mourning.
This original Indigenous-White polemic fortified the disparate contentions that have characterised Australia’s history and broader efforts to form a cohesive national identity and culture. While it’s rarely acknowledged, the formation of an Australia Day explicated these tensions and the deeper national psyche.
This ‘national unconscious’ is shaped by guilt on the one hand, and an over-assertive, even belligerent, nationalism on the other.
Is it about a date?
Either way, the formation of a consensus Australia Day and its expression as a public holiday from 1994 has drawn this deeper cultural polemic out into the open.
So the difficulty remains. Is there any Australia Day date that could by-pass the deep offence of colonial invasion? Is there any date that would not offend Indigenous Australians?
January 1 has been suggested, the date in 1901 of Australia’s first national parliament.
Unfortunately, January is also a month in which some of the most heinous colonial crimes have been perpetrated against Aborigines.
New Year’s Day in 1856, for example, is marked by the murder of innumerable Aboriginal Australians amidst what is now known as the Raglan massacres.
So perhaps it’s not the date that needs to change but the ways in which Australia Day is conceived and symbolised?
Leaving aside the date, a national day is designed to bring all Australians together in celebration of the security, opportunities, and affluence that are endowed by a democratic state.
Unfortunately, such celebrations obscure the treacherous details of this artifice of togetherness. In particular, a simple, celebratory national day obscures the hierarchies that underscore this national affluence. These hierarchies are constructed over the blood and suffering of others, past and present.
Reconcilliation
An artificial national day also obscures the profound violence that has been inflicted on other species and the country’s natural life systems themselves.
So, a more profound national day should encourage reflection on this suffering. It should be a Day of Mourning, not only for Indigenous Australians but all the beings whose blood has been spilled through the formation and progress of this nation.
These reflections, however, shouldn’t be a manacle to despair. Rather, our reflections should take us into new ways of thinking about ourselves and the land we now occupy.
That is, we should look for reconciliation beyond the polemic.
The 26 January date is as good and as bad as any other. But we need to take our mourning and reflection seriously. Close the shops. Stall the consumer frenzy. Consider who we are and how we have come to this. Consider the Indigenous people and their suffering.
If we can do this in a morning, then the afternoon could be a time to restore our sense of mutual belonging and mutual responsibility. Dance. Parade. Sing. Play sport. Turn on the lights.
But do it within an acknowledgement of our past and present fallibilities. Consider nation through the prism of a better future.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
