Australia Day

Initially I wasn’t really sure what this day was all about. It comes at the end of the summer break just before the kids return to school, and though it always arrives on January 26, Monday is an official day off for everybody, banks and businesses closed, so it’s a bit like Labor Day except that they have their own Labour Day in May. There is some flag waving involved along the lines of the Fourth of July, though they already have their own independence day of sorts, Federation Day, January 1. The roots of the celebration commemorate the first landing (or the first invasion to the Aboriginal residents) so it’s a bit like Thanksgiving too, including the emphasis on sports with Maria Sharapova winning the Australian Open in the living room and a ball game on the radio outside, but without the turkey and fuss.

We spent the day with a mixed bag of friends, old ones, new ones, with the Aussies outnumbering the Kiwis, Yanks, and Brits by only one, celebrating our hosts’ son’s birthday as well as the birthday of Em, Bee’s mom, grilling chicken and fish kebabs and snags on the barbie, drinking champagne and homebrewed ginger beer, swatting flies (“...it wouldn’t be Australia without the flies,” according to one partygoer), laughing a lot, admiring our host’s Southern Cross tattoo, one I’m sure he sported prior to January 26, though we had never noticed, and wrapping things up with an impromptu game of cricket.

That’s Australia Day.


Every tradition grows more venerable -- the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.

-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche