Invasion Day: 'Worst date ever'

The best date ever to highlight the worst date to have as Australia's national day is of course 26 January, Australia's official national day.

It marks the day in 1788 that Captain Phillip and his First Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour to start the British penal colony. They'd arrived at their intended destination, Botany Bay, a few days earlier, but found it to be without drinking water, so relocated.

To the indigenous population 26 January thus marks the start of the invasion and colonisation of their lands.

Over the years it's become the thing to mark the day with rallies and marches, and other symbolic events to draw attention to their continuing plight. It's got to the stage where the Invasion Day events in Australia's capital cities are almost overshadowing the mainstream celebratory events. A major theme this year has been the 'Change the Date' movement, highlighting all the other dates when Australians could all come together and celebrate their nation without offending a rather essential core group of them. Needless to say, the major political parties have yet to come to grips with this, and for now are happy to be on the losing side of history.







I attended the Sydney event, which started with a rally at 'The Block' at Redfern, and then became a march through city streets to Camperdown. It was a big deal.






As one of the speakers noted, there wasn't a conventional Australian flag to be seen in this crowd. I noticed too that when I strolled back through the city through the usual Australia Day crowds doing their more usual Australia Day strollings, a large proportion of them were carrying Aboriginal flags as well as the conventional ones.