Hey Plain Jane

We never used to do a lot of things to do with Australia Day. When I was a kid, you’d never wish someone a ‘Happy Australia Day” on the 26th of January. You’d never ever hoist up an Aussie flag in your yard, unless you were a resident of Government House. You were reasonably unlikely to do anything remotely “Australian” like whack a few snags on a barbie or sing Advance Australia Fair or cook a damper and serve it with golden syrup. TIme was it would never even enter our minds that this might be Invasion Day to some.

I suppose that things are not what they were is a sign that our culture is alive and moving. I cannot count the number of times I was spontaneously greeted with the dubious salutation of ‘happy Australia Day’. Not only were Australian flags quite commonly hoisted from makeshift flagpoles everywhere (including one neighbourhood wit who pegged his flag to his Hills Hoist clothes line, a potent Aussie icon), every third car was bedecked with fluttering flags of the blue, white and red. As it happens our car was one such car, sporting three flags. We found one of them on the roadside (having broken off a car apparently) and were given two others by a generous and patriotic  mate. He revealed that the local bottle shop was the main culprit in starting the flag to car trend; “buy a carton get a free flag for every kid in the family” and I cannot express how deeply Australian that advertising sentiment is. Riding about town with three flags fluttering was John’s idea of sensational, and my idea of a bit gauche. But there we have it. The flag car tradition starts about here.

Yesterday in church once of the hymns chosen was Advance Australia Fair, and yet another was “We Are Australian”. Hmmm.

Today we took up an invitation from the parents of one of Jack’s long-time day care friends to go for an outdoor barb-b-que brunch at a swimming hole in the bush. What we have done in years recent is to drive up to Palm Cove, a posh Northern beach mainly for tourists, were the council throws a free sausage sizzle and puts on irritatingly loud bush bands singing scratchy versions of ‘ Ryebuck Shearer’ at eight in the morning in the blazing beach heat. A chance to do something different and perhaps much quieter and shadier sounded good to me. We went down in a convoy with others (all cars fluttering with flags, of course!) to an incredibly beautiful bush area with a quiet crystal creek, a large sandy bank area overhung with lush leafed trees…..in short, absolutely Australian. No-one there. Just us. In the utter Australian-ness of it all. We had a snag barbie, boiled a billy, and I even brought freshly made damper with golden syrup. The kids yahooed through the water for hours, we sat about having tea and occasionally got into the water to wallow about. It was about the pinnacle of Australian-ness, in truth.

And to make it just that tinsy bit more Australian, one of the friends in attendance was indigenous. His wife wished us a “Happy….Uhm…Australia Day” as she applied an Aussie flag temporary tattoo to my arm. She added that it’s also Invasion Day, which is not something to be happy about. It’s a complex nation. While her Aboriginal husband was handing out the Aussie flags he’d procured at the bottle shop, she was tattooing me and reminding me that it was not a day to celebrate if you’re black. Uhm…

This is our culture in motion.