TheBanyanTree: Australia Day

[Peter Macinnis]

On another list, I was asked:

>Happy Australia Day, Peter! How do you celebrate it? I'd pour a few pints of
>Foster's down Steve Irwin's alimentary canal and feed him to a roo.... <g>

Few things get to Australians more than the belief that we drink Foster's,
admire Irwin, and are surropunded by wildlife, so I set out to rip into
him, but couldn't be bothered. (I decided not to mention the brown snake
that I caught and returned to the National Park, just over the road last
week, or the possum that was bouncing over our roof last night -- we need
to avoid encouraging stereotyping like that.)

Today is the anniversary of the first white invasion of Australia, when the
First Fleeters stepped ashore on January 26, 1788. It was celebrated in
1789, basically to say "Phew! made it through a whole year", and it has
continued ever since. The invasion happened in Sydney, so we take it more
seriously than, say, sandgropers and other lesser breeds, but it is a day
when politicians preen (i.e., no different from any other day) and the rest
of us party (again, pretty much an ordinary day, but in larger numbers).

They landed first at Botany Bay, looked around, said "Urk!" and came up the
coast to Port Jackson, looked at Manly, decided a sou'easter would make it
an uneasy anchorage, and went south, found water and a great place to build
an opera house, so went back and got the rest of the mob, came back, and
stepped ashore on January 26.  That is what we celebrate, rather than the
orgy that took place when the women convicts came ashore.

Before getting onto the celebrations, Chris and I saw Irwin sent up
mercilessly in a piece of street theatre yesterday at The Rocks -- two
people in safari gear with radio mikes, two stilt walkers with camel
costumes and bird beaks on long necks, the heads and beaks operated by two
people in grey -- these "animals" were called canterlerpers. Then four
"kennelpigs" (like aardvarks on steroids -- also stilt walkers) came into
the arena.  The whole thing was breathlessly commentated in Attenborough
intonation, and included a warning not to feed babies to the animals "as
one of your local wildlife experts did".  Cheers rang out.

We only feed Foster's to foreigners. Irwin may be a prat, but he is OUR
prat. No Foster's for him.  The last carnivorous roo (that is, we *think*
it was carnivorous) died some 20,000 years ago.  So, no Foster's, no Irwin,
no roos -- we spend the day partying.  In South Australia, they will
compete to see who can throw a frozen tuna furthest. Can you imagine people
competing to see who is the biggest tosser? And in South Australia, where
they have the Downers to compete with?

Most things will be on the beach or harbour.  There will be food, drink,
irreverence, sport, sailing, throwing fruit at boring speechmakers, drink,
food, barbecues, beer, sitting in the sun, races, informal street cricket
and beach cricket, beer, sausages, swimming, yachting, hooting politicians,
food, drink -- as you can see, a whole variety of things.

On the radio, on the station I listen to, we have a day of Australian
classical music -- either composed or performed by Australians, or both.
Television stations are trotting out Australian movies to show, some
classics from the 1930s, one or two more recent ones.

We started off the day with bacon and eggs on the barbecue, but that was
our only real concession. Tomorrow, Chris is back at school, so she is
getting ready, and I am doing the tax for last year.  Yesterday was our day
out -- we did three historical exhibitions in the State Library, then
checked the new stuff at the Museum of Sydney, and had lunch there, then
down to the Museum of Contemporary Art on the shores of the harbour, Rocks
Markets, pub (for a Hahn Light), bought Chris two bracelets, markets again,
another pub for a beer (Hahn Light again) and some jazz, and home.
Somehow, I didn't buy any books, so we have diarised yesterday as a
Peculiar Day.

At the moment, our daughter and her husband are staying here each night
because their bathroom is being done in their flat in the next suburb.
Tonight, they will do a barbecuse here, and our older son will be be over
-- younger son is off up the coast drinking beer with his school mates.

That's about it . . . the dog is lying in the sun, wondering if he should
move to the shade, or wait for the shade to come to him, outside the
lawnmowers are calling to each other in what must surely be a mating
ritual, the sky is blue, and out west, the afternoon thunder and lightning
show is building.

Tomorrow, I may need to wear shoes for the first time in a month. Summer is
slowly dying, though even ordinary folk have four months of swimming in
front of them.  Australia Day may be a celebration, but it seals the end of
High Summer in Sydney.

peter


 _--|\   Peter Macinnis, feral wordsmith, & science gossip.
/     \  Klein bottle stopper design consultant, 
\.--._*  wholesaler of patented bonsai windvane mechanisms
     v   http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm