Australia's day for secrets, flags and cowards
On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be
celebrated in Australia. It will be "a day for families", say the
newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street
corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how
proud they are.
For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my
lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish
society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to
call "New Australians" often choose 26 January, "Australia Day", to be
sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces
from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.
It
was sunrise on 26 January so many years ago when I stood with
Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians and threw wreaths into Sydney
Harbour. We had climbed down to one of the perfect sandy coves where
others had stood as silhouettes, watching as the ships of Britain's
"First Fleet" dropped anchor on 26 January, 1788. This was the moment
the only island continent on earth was taken from its inhabitants; the
euphemism was "settled". It was, wrote Henry Reynolds, one of few honest
Australian historians, one of the greatest land grabs in world history.
He described the slaughter that followed as "a whispering in our
hearts".
The original Australians are the oldest human
presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their
continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To justify this
fiction, mass murder was ordained. In 1838, the Sydney Monitor reported:
"It was resolved to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that
quarter." This referred to the Darug people who lived along the great
Hawkesbury River not far from Sydney. With remarkable ingenuity and
without guns, they fought an epic resistance that remains almost a
national secret. In a land littered with cenotaphs honouring Australia's
settler dead in mostly imperial wars, not one stands for those warriors
who fought and fell defending Australia.
