I think it was around 1985. I was five years old, and I was in the back seat of a red Holden Gemini – our family car – at the Burwood Kmart just before Australia Day. A young girl was selling stickers which had an Australian flag on it and the words “Young and Free” in bold letters along the bottom. I remember convincing my parents to buy the sticker to put on our rear bumper bar. They agreed, and our little Gemini wore the sticker on its back bumper until the car was rear-ended a few years later.
If that had occurred today, in 2022, and my young children had asked me to purchase that same sticker to put on our car, I would not agree. That’s not because Australia doesn’t deserve a national day, but because it doesn’t need to be on January 26. And also because I no longer believe Australia is young or free.
In 1985, the author’s family Gemini bore an Australian flag sticker.
This week, in a welcome development, the City of Melbourne announced it will call on the federal government to change the date of Australia Day. As Lord Mayor Sally Capp noted, a date change was not about creating arguments and division, but about bringing everyone together to celebrate what it meant to be Australian.
I grew up as a person of colour in a country that was predominantly white. A country which so many times made me feel unwelcome – that people of my type could never be considered equal. As time went on, I came to see that the traditional owners of this land have had a much tougher time than I ever had.
Despite the adversity I faced growing up here, I’m now more at peace with who I am. I’ve made a life for myself and my children (generously aided by my parents of course). I’m not sure that many of the traditional inhabitants of this country have had the same opportunities I have had. And I firmly believe that when all is said and done, this is their land, their country, their spiritual home.
Australia is obviously not young, nor is it entirely free. Australia is not “free” for those people who have sought to make this country their home, but remain stuck in detention. It is not free for those Indigenous people who don’t receive the opportunities that many of us take for granted.
Australia Day has become a very different day to the one I experienced as a child. I don’t remember anything significant about it back then apart from the fact it was a day off from school, and it’s always the day we celebrate my father’s birthday. After the Howard years, it became a jingoistic day of flag-waving, where patriotism is the order of the day. A day when the “love it or leave it” crowd have their main time out in the sun.
As someone who’s always to an extent felt like a guest in their own home, I don’t understand it. Particularly when considering that the traditional owners of this land consider January 26 to be the official start of the invasion and massacre of their people. I don’t understand how people can insist on celebrating when others consider it a day of mourning. It seems cruel, almost aiming to double down on the misery that some people feel on this day.
I hope that by the time I am a grandfather (if I’m lucky enough to become one), and my grandchildren ask me to put an Australian flag sticker on my car, I’ll feel comfortable enough to agree. But that will only occur if the date of Australia Day is changed. I don’t think changing the date will solve much, but it is a gesture, and an important one at that. It costs most of us very little, but it may mean much to those it negatively affects.
I remember when Kevin Rudd formally issued his apology to the stolen generations. I remember the pride I felt at that moment. This is another opportunity. A start, nothing more. But hopefully the start of a journey that will finally give our Indigenous people and culture the respect and attention they deserve.
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