oh straya, the sunburnt country, on the 26th of this month we celebrated being an occer, we celebrated what it is to be austrayan, we drank beers, we wore flags, we sang songs and we had a darn good time.
But i admit, i was a hypocrite on this 'australia' day... i started my day attending an Invasion day rally, followed by some occer ways that evening.
invasion day is a day that the aboriginal people prefer not to celebrate, it is the day their country was taken from them. instead they take to the streets, and fight for recognition and a change for the day when people feel most Australian.
On Wednesday, i went to this rally, i yelled with the aboriginals and other protesters, i was proud to be there and i felt passionate about changing the date of Australia day. but afterwards i went to the bottleshop, stocked up on beers and headed to a party, yep, im pretty bad.
i also had some deliciousness at my friends house (for us it was an excuse to get together because we all had the day off - we did consume some alcoholic beverages though but in a very un-patriotic way)
It got me thinking about what i was actually celebrating, what everyone was celebrating, yes the Australian flag was adorned by many, and people got more bogan than normal and i did have sausages waved in my face as i was walking down sandy bad road but these days we don’t celebrate the commemoration of Australia, we aren’t celebrating the death and rape and murder of the aboriginals, we are celebrating our country and we are proud to be Australian. Although I did say the whole day that i was celebrating invasion day and i was merely at a party to listen to the hottest 100 which might i add, i get more and more disappointed in every year.
It came at a strange time, this whole anti-australia day stuff because i had been for coffee with my granita (im so clever, her name is anita and shes my granny so i call her granita) and she moved from Europe about 10 years ago. But Australia will not accept her and let her become a citizen, they also claim that her money which she has on some random british isle is criminal money (perhaps it is but you always listen to your granita) and therefore she cant actually access any of it. So at coffee the other day she was moaning and whinging and simply telling me how much she doesn’t like Australia. And i got a bit patriotic. I told her how amazing it is to live in such a wonderful place, how i am proud to live here and to tell people that i am Australian (apart from in some countries were Australians are drunkards who just want prostitutes) but i told her how lucky she is just to even be here.
I do think it is wrong and really sad that we celebrate ‘our’ day on the day that so many died all those years ago and i am all for changing the date. I would vote and sign and stand up for that but i think now the truth is, Australia day is just an excuse to drink too many beers. Lets change the name, lets change the date, lets just have a public holiday where you can drink beer and be with your friends... have a beer day??
or actually i think it should be a day of jamming. because we had some brilliant jams that evening...