Greetings, my fellow countrymen and drinkers.

I would like to think that the time has come for us to actively reconsider the bloody absurd notion of celebrating Australia Day on 26 January. This is for several reasons, which I will get to in a minute. Before I do I want to make it perfectly bloody clear (so pay attention, so put down that half-scoffed lamington, park your arse on the esky and bloody well listen up, cobber) that I am not against the concept of Australia Day per se, nor am I unpatriotic or un-Australian or any of those other poncy epithets that get bandied around on talkback radio or in Prime Ministerial press releases.

Firstly I am sick to whinging death of that bloody Union-jack encrusted flag. I am sick of seeing people wrap themselves in it, I am sick of seeing it tattooed on the bulging biceps of half-pissed louts at the cricket, and I am sick of seeing it flare up in bloody fireworks over the bloody Sydney Harbour Bridge every New Year’s bloody Eve. I bloody well get it: we were for the first two centuries of white Australia hopelessly and inextricably linked with the Poms. Can someone please get a pair of scissors, some thread and an emblem of something remotely Australian—a half scoffed lamington would do, or an x-ray of Shane Warne’s text-messaging thumb, or a biopsy of Lleyton’s Hewitt’s tonsils—and rent this wretched symbol of colonial oppression from our midst?

And while I’m on the subject, just what the hell does ‘girt by sea’ actually bloody mean anyway? Is it some sort of active verb? “Hey Mum, me mates and me are headin’ down to the beach to do some girting. Don’t burn the snags on the barbie will ya?” Can you girt at the footy? What a pointless and redundant lyric. No wonder 97.5% of the population mumble it every time it has to be sung in public: sheer embarrassment.

Anyway, I’ve undressed. Sorry, I mean digressed. I can recall not so very long ago whole armies of perfectly intelligent Australians (no, Pauline, that’s not an oxymoron) marching proudly across bridges and into parks and down streets and Christ knows where, hands linked in unison, carrying big bloody banners that said Sorry and all that bizzo. Remember that? All that reconciliation kerfuffle, Little Johnnie’s black armband view of history endorsed by the pompous and overblown scribblings of bloody Keith Windschuttle in fat doorstops of books filled with all this bullshit about how Aboriginal massacres never took place and there’s never been any racism in Australia and all that hot air piffle. What happened to all that? Has it gone away? And if it hasn’t why the bloody hell in the name of the almighty Les Patterson are we STILL celebrating our national day on the same date that recognises the beginning of the long and miserable end for the indigenous peoples of this sunburned country?

No don’t go gettin’ me wrong—I love bein’ an Aussie and I reckon, without lookin’ too hard, we can find something to be proud of. But I get really sick and bloody tired of watching all this flag waving, especially when that bloody Union Jack’s right there front and centre, while the original owners of this country get patronised, marginalised, ostracised, down-sized, ignored and down-right treated worse than a Kiwi virgin on drenching day. I mean, fair suck of the sauce bottle, we’ve been here a couple of hundred years and we act like we bloody own the place. It’s bloody bullshit, mate.

So we need to find another date where we can cover ourselves in glory and celebrate good Aussie traditions like learning to drive in your brother’s girlfriend’s VW Bug during the Summer school holidays when you’re sixteen, getting smacked in the face with a wayward surfboard off Mooloolaba, giving a six-hundred-year-old Tassie gum tree a hug and telling John Gay to take his fucking writ and shove it clean up his capitalist arse. I reckon there are two alternatives.

What’s so wrong with hijacking Anzac Day?

What’s so wrong with hijacking Anzac Day for the cause? Most of the Anzacs are dead, so they won’t give a rat’s arse. The ones who are left can still have their parade and it can remind us all of the value of mateship, of sticking by someone even after they’ve copped a faceful of mustard gas and the blasted Jerries are just over the trench wall, of pitting your week’s grocery money on one game of two-up and thinking of simply genius excuses to tell the wife when you lose. And if we incorporate the two, we’d be assured of getting a public holiday even if April 25th falls on a weekend, and there’s nothin’ much more Aussie than worshipping at the altar of the almighty Public Holiday.

Or what about December 3rd? It was good enough for the gold diggers to go to the barricades and tell old Charlie Hotham where he could stick his bloody miner’s licence. I’d love to see the Southern Cross become our national flag, except the bloody unions got hold of it and they’ve tarnished it forever. But I don’t care what you say, the Eureka Stockade was about nothing if it wasn’t about tryin’ to get a bloody fair go. How fair bloody blowfly dinkum Aussie is tryin’ to get a fair go? And I’ll tell ya somethin’ else. December 3 is Ned Kelly’s birthday. All right, so Ned was a bit naughty, but you’d get a bit bloody stroppy too if you came home and caught some pimply faced constable trying to feel up your sister. And for his faults, Ned Kelly was a bloody fighter, mate, with more guts in his little finger than you could poke a stick at. And he hated the bloody poms.

Bloody oath, mate, this country needs a shakeup. We’ve got kids in bloody detention centres, we’ve got citizens languishing in overseas jails at the mercy of an American justice system that’s slower than a bloody glacier, we’ve got soldiers getting their goolies blown off in a war that a significant proportion of the population of this country opposed, our pale little excuse for a Prime Minister’s got his nose so far up GWB’s clacker that he can probably smell toothpaste, and still we celebrate January the 26th like we’re the happiest bloody group of white Anglo-Saxon middle-class volvo drivers on the planet. Not that we don’t have reason to be happy, of course, but in being happy we need to take the bloody blinkers off.

Charge your tinnies, ladies and gents. Here’s to being an Aussie on every day of the year, with embracing everything and accepting everyone that that entails. And let’s for Christ’s sake get that bloody flag changed.

Cheers to yas.

Cameron Hindrum,
Launceston