January 26

It’s nothing if not a complicated day here in Australia today, what with our complicated history and our… mixed response to that in the present day. I confess my own response has been blunt in the past, given my own Scottish ancestry; England has been fucking over my folks’ old country for several centuries longer than this one. You’d think I’d be more sympathetic to our indigenous cousins on that account but no, I wasn’t, which is something I’m not proud of…

Anyway, I found the above image on the Aboriginal Tent Embassy FB page nearly ten years ago, it turned up in my FB memories today, and, well, it offers a perspective I’d never considered before that time. I’m still somewhat indifferent to Australia Day as such cos, let’s face it, I’m not affected by it, but there’s a lot of people who are affected by it and I have more sympathy for them these days than I once did. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think the majority of people here give a fuck about the national day itself and wouldn’t care about the date being changed as long as they don’t lose a public holiday…