Happy Australia Day

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Mackka said:
Good question aussiefarmer, I don't think I have heard of a suggested date, however, I am going with old mate that suggested May8.
I love it.
Mackka
Sorry i changed my question while you were typing ]:D makka is refering to my question of what day do the indigenous citizens suggest we celebrate ?
 
Keep it as it is, I respect indiginous culture but can't stand the inner Sydney lefty activist minority who want to always try to change our country and culture from the way it is now. None of us were living when the the first fleet came here, why should more division be created, it's not doing any of us any good.

I said to a good mate of mine who is Aboriginal and who calls Australia day invasion day, "why can't we all just forgive but not forget what happened"? He agreed. I won't even let him answer the indiginous questions when we play trivia any more as he keeps getting the answers wrong. :p

I'm a proud Aussie who's family arrived on the second fleet, no one can take that away from me.
 
Well said H

I am fiercely patriotic and this falls under change for changes sake.

Got the Aussie flag for the aerial on the ute, a new flag sticker and an esky full of tinnies then off to a barby hosted by a local Aboriginal community worker

There will be a lot of tall stories, drinking, eating and flag waving, that's both flags together - as it should be ....

I guarantee if there is any talk of invasion day, it will be squashed

As for the naysayers of the 26th Jan for Australia Day - Eat my shorts!!!!!!
 
Some absolute clowns have vandalized captain cook statue

1516834270_img_3474.jpg
 
As I have found new heritage in my family's blood line, and being a small part Australian Aboriginal.
For me,
It changes nothing, all this subject does, is divide us more, I thought we where all Australians?
I am now a part of the Australian Aboriginal community! (Gives me no right to say anything) but I will say stuff anyway,

I think that choice belongs to the Australian Aboriginal people!
Not us silly white folk! (lol)

How important is this issue, in the grand scheme of things?

Things like drugs, alcohol, domestic violence and mental health issues are far more of a problem, than what day some small people want to party on!

Maybe we should try and make a f....... difference, instead of a change! Because changing the day will not change anything! The divide will still be there.

Anyway, we up here in FNQ, with loads of love a fun, my mob will be BBq'n and partying like its 2018, not 1877 or 1901 or when ever.
Because that's the bloody way its done!

Be at pease my brothers and sisters

Together we stand,..........
 
Australia has been such an insulated country that most people dont seem to understand what has happened overseas. History has shown that if its not one country then its another, pillaging, raping and murdering another country. This seems to be what humans do. It may be one neighbour against another, or some dictator that wants to be supreme ruler.

ALL countries have had their turmoil and dealt with it! How many times was England invaded? The Romans, Germans, Vikings, Norsemen, French, Dutch etc etc all have had a go at wanting to be king of the castle. Australia does not hold a monopoly on having been 'invaded'.

Im not condoning any of this violence, but lets get over it and stop being such wusses! Its all HISTORY!
 
I remember when I lived in Townsville. They had a re-enactment of Cooks landing. There were men dressed in mariners garb coming ashore with aboriginal people meeting them with mock ceremony. There were some tongue in cheek banners that the aboriginal people were holding with words like welcome, hey mate and the like. One bloke had painted his sign with piss off ya *******. It was the funniest thing Id seen for a long time but it showed some of the best of Aussie humour but it also showed that there will be some who dont agree with whats going on. Nevertheless we are one nation we will fight side by side and die side by side if some bugger wants to have a go at us. So lets leave it be and just get on with it. I love Australia
 
There's a funny poster at a Pt Lincoln footy club, it shows a couple of aboriginals and British sailor watching the second fleet arrive and the caption reads "And you reckon you've got trouble with boat people!" :p :p :p
 
Absolute disgraceful behaviour in damaging Cook,s statue, disgusting and throes responsible should be forced to clean it up and pay restitution.
Queenslander of the Year, Thurston today said, his people don't feel included and would like to see a national conversation take place.
My half brother,s family are First Fleeters so I understand fully the passion of early settlers and Heatho I know know you are very proud and rightly so.
I don't think anything will happen in my lifetime but something will happen.
Mackka
 
From a news story I just read:

"The nation may seem divided over whether Friday is 'Australia Day' or 'Invasion Day' but historians and legal experts say some basic facts should not be ignored.

The First Fleet sailed from England with explicit instructions that upon its arrival in New South Wales the indigenous people were not to be harmed.When it landed at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson on January 26, 1788, no shots were fired and no one was physically hurt. Whether the country was 'invaded' or 'settled' is at the heart of the debate over how and when we mark Australia Day.

The Royal Navy's Captain Arthur Phillip had been empowered under British law by King George III to establish a penal colony in New South Wales. The land he was ordered to settle had been occupied by Aborigines for perhaps 60,000 years but was not legally recognised as a sovereign nation.
Eleven ships under his command left Portsmouth in May 1787 with about 1,400 men, women and children on board, bound for Botany Bay. The ships were small, each one no bigger than a Manly ferry. Leading the fleet were two Royal Navy vessels, accompanying three store ships and six convict transports.

Among Phillip's instructions upon reaching his destination were that Aborigines' lives and livelihoods be protected and friendly relations with them established. The First Fleet's initial landing was gradual, with ships arriving between January 18 and 20 at Botany Bay, south of Port Jackson, where James Cook had dropped anchor 18 years earlier.According to the NSW Migration Heritage Centre, the local Aboriginal people met the fleet in an 'uneasy stand-off' at what is now called Frenchmans Beach at La Perouse. No violence occurred.

Unsatisfied with Botany Bay as a suitable site to establish a colony, on January 21 Phillip led a small party in three boats to explore other options further north. He entered Port Jackson, which he later described in a letter as 'the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security' His party returned to Botany Bay two days later to find another colonial power exploring the coast.On January 24, two French ships from the scientific expedition led by Jean-Franois de La Prouse were seen just outside Botany Bay.The French, who stayed at Botany Bay until March 10, fired upon Aborigines in February. On January 26, the First Fleet headed to Port Jackson, landing at a spot Phillip called Sydney Cove after Lord Sydney, the British Home Secretary. Only Phillip and several officers and marines from the navy vessel Supply initially went ashore, with the rest of those on board watching from the water.

The British flag was planted in a short ceremony and formal possession was declared. The other 10 ships of the fleet did not arrive until later in the day. There was no armed conflict with the local Eora people. No one was physically harmed. Phillip's instructions regarding Aborigines were that he would 'conciliate their affections', to 'live in amity and kindness with them.' He was to punish anyone who should 'wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations.' Those instructions were standard British orders for the time and initially were largely followed.

Writing in the Dictionary of Sydney, historian Grace Karskens said: 'Phillip and the officers were genuinely committed to establishing and maintaining friendly and peaceful relations.' 'The early meetings in Botany Bay and Port Jackson were often marked by friendliness, curiosity, gift-giving and dancing together on the beaches. 'This is so entirely different from earlier violent and murderous encounters between Europeans and Indigenous people. 'It is also very different from the frontier violence that dominated pastoral expansion in Australia well into the twentieth century. In that sense it was enlightened and humane.' Professor Karskens wrote the arrival of the First Fleet and the establishment of a small camp at Sydney Cove was momentous only in that 'it marked the origins of a great city.''But at the time it was just a tiny pinprick on the edge of a vast and ancient Aboriginal continent - it made barely a ripple at first. 'From this perspective, the idea that Phillip's first footfall on the beach in Botany Bay brought instant death and corruption across the entire continent is Eurocentric nonsense.

Professor Karskens noted the Eora did immediately have to cope with an influx of strangers on their lands and waterways, which must have been alarming. 'Phillip did forbid anyone from shooting or otherwise harming Eora. But by anyone he meant convicts. 'He had them severely punished for doing so and for stealing from Eora. 'But this did not mean that officers and other military did not shoot at Aboriginal people - they did, usually with small shot - usually because warriors were throwing spears and stones at them.' According to Professor Karskens, the first fatal shooting might not have occurred until September 1789 when a Henry Hacking shot into a group of Aborigines out hunting on the North Shore. As the colony spread in the years to come, so did the violence. More and more land was taken. Massacres did occur. Some Australians say all of those wrongs must be attributed to the First Fleet arriving at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788.

But there was no violent confrontation on that first Australia Day"

There is no reason to change the date, it marks the date our ancestors arrived and not the beginning of violence towards the indigenous
 
I listened to Niel Mitchell interview an aboriginal lady who was a politician in the territory if I remember correctly.
She said in the bush they didn't get all offended, it was only the people claiming to be aboriginal or the greens like Denatali who stir up trouble and cause division where there wasn't any or had no reason to be any.
The politically correct crowd need to be taken to court for terrorism. Yes terrorism because that is actually what they are doing, striking fear into people and making them afraid to carry on with their lives how they see fit, they are attempting to force us all into their ways.

Too many companies get on board the pc train where they should just worry about running their Friggin company not bloody social agenda's. We saw a lot of that with the yes campaign. Even sporting groups want to bloody tell us what to think and how to act. Enough is enough!

Same with that PETA organisation, they are economic terrorists that threaten the livelihoods of farmers and should be tried as such.

Basically I'm sick of being told why I need to be sorry for things I didn't do, things the Aust gov didn't do, go bloody take it up with the british gov.
Most of the people here now are descendants of people who came well after all the major troubles were long gone.
 
I think DetectingSa's well constructed reminder of our nation's founding and the references to the 'orders of the day' in relation to having 'good' relations with the native peoples is fine if you are seeking in someway, to justify the incursion of British Rule upon this land.Further it is right to say that the impact it had on the overall aboriginal way of life was miniscule in it's beginning.I might point out at this stage that my families connection to country began with the arrival of the Atlas 11 on the 28th of February..I think..in 1802 and disembarkation of one Nicholas Delaney sentenced for his part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
By the time of his arrival...just 14 years after Governor Phillip established that 'low impact' settlement at Sydney Cove,Quarrying and timber felling industries were already established as was a fishing industry and extensive agricultural practices were eating up more and more land by the day.
Sydney itself was ever expanding and has continued to expand ever since.Huge tracts of land were being usurped continually and every white man's eye was directed to what lay west of the Blue Mountains.
Every year that passed, saw displacement of the native population..and continuing conflict that resulted in deaths on both sides...but essentially the deaths of the native people whether by lead ball-shot or diseases, was decimating the native population. My point is: That the stories of those early conflicts was forever handed down from Generation to Generation..as was the traditional way of learning..by song and dance and story form.It is easy for us whites to dismiss the past as just 'History' and to claim 'innocence for the 'sins of our fathers'... but it is to the Aboriginal community at large nothing short of an insult, and does nothing to address the deep resentment that exists throughout the Aboriginal communities.We as modern day white Australia have much to be proud of in the founding of out great Democracy..But we have to ..once and for all time, address the issue of the celebration of our Nationhood, so as that it serves to unite us..not divide us.
 
I hope I don't upset anyone but I was wondering if we take the emotive sides out of the question, it seems to me that if we could ask on a blank slate - what day is best for a national day? For simplicity let's keep it to a minimum number of days (as there are a few possible dates) and recognising other non-indigenous peoples who willingly or non-willingly settled/visited here before the Brits

1 the founding of permanent settlement by the Brits; or

2 the joining of largely British colonies into one country/nation,

In any event we need, and have, an Australia Day and I'll have a beer and some lamb tomorrow.
 
Dispossessed. .... only nation on earth without a country of its own unfettered by outside control (so I'm led to believe).... will it be given back once its been ***** completely along with its motley crue of many colors..... cause by then it wont be able to be a force to be reconed with on a world stage..... all of us together at last with nothing left they've overlooked.... poisoned all the water tables... stolen the economic future out of the very ground....... not us we all say (and rightly so)..... so who is it really that stands between us as a real nation and our wealth underfoot.....
eyes open ladies and gentlemen...... for we are one... born upon the rock.... where do you think you really sprang from... no matter what color you are...... all in this together... black white n bridle. :rainbow:
 
Why I am a proud Australian and you should be too.
Full text here.
https://amp.afr.com/opinion/columni...too-20180123-h0nbum?__twitter_impression=true

Titie: One Nation.Many Nations.
Full text http://www.indigenouschamber.org.au/one-nation-many-nations/
This is a very long read but well worth the time, because it explains the issues from an Indigenous perspective..

This excerpt from the full text , speaks to my head and also to my heart. i hope it will do the same for all who take the time to read and understand.

If it were up to me, Australia Day would not be celebrated on the 26th of January. That tension between commemorating British invasion and celebrating unity and Australias unique character and achievements casts a permanent shadow over that date. People try to forget it, ignore it, hope they can fill the day with so much good that the tension will not be noticed. But it is always there.

And it will continue to be unless the date of Australia Day is changed or something else happens on that date that is a true source of celebration for Indigenous people. If, for example, the first treaty signing occurred on a 26th of January as it should have back in 1788 then that could build a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives of that date.
 
To look at it another way, if a foreign country invaded Australia today and we had to annually celebrate their day of arrival I wouldn't think that would be appropriate and I wouldn't want to do it either. It's like we are celebrating a win rather than uniting all Australians in a day of celebration.
Jon
 

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