Aussie Expats Update – Our Expat Australia Day & Other Tales

Friday again—where does the week go?

We’re off to yet another ball tonight, since James’s Brigade decided that celebrating St Barbara’s Day when it’s meant to be celebrated (in December), is lame, and we’re much better off doing it in late January. The big upside is that I’m going to paint my toenails red and James’s sister, Amy, will be coming with us: so hopefully we will all get out of it alive! I can’t, however, promise that I won’t eat other people’s desserts. I’ll try to restrict myself to just two or three.

We’re greatly looking forward to doing a whole lot of nothing this weekend (though we’ve got a training swim planned in prep for our October ocean swim), since we’ll have had two social events in a row. This week has been a flurry of reading for me (I’m two books down out of 20-odd for Trimester 1 subjects) and prepping for the road trip. (I’m starting to think I need to bold it, or come up with a catchy title that will more accurately convey our journey’s epicness, but I’ll get back to you all on that.) I’m starting to get excited for how crazy and awesome this is all going to be!!

Maybe a little premature, but hey, we’ve now got five places booked… And about another 18 to go. Scouts honour, I will do some bookings today and over the weekend.

Just trying to make Amy feel more at home down there.

In other key news, for those of you who don’t know, yesterday, the 26th of January, was Australia Day. It commemorates the landing of Captain Cook and the First Fleet in NSW in 1788 and, like most holidays designed to celebrate the colonisation of a landmass, has a number of associated issues (for context: in many ways, these problems are not dissimilar to those linked with Columbus Day in the USA). Australia Day as it is currently celebrated wasn’t consistently marked by a public holiday, and hectic Aussie BBQs until 1994, but this particular date has been actively protested against by various groups—including Indigenous Australians and people sympathetic to their cause—since the 1930s, due to the fact that, hardly surprisingly, the first white settlers weren’t very friendly or accepting towards the peoples they found already living in Australia.

In fact, if you dig a little deeper and look a little closer at what white settlers did upon colonising Australia, it’s repulsive. It would turn your stomach to see how ‘civilised’ people treated other human beings: before the 1967 referendum, Indigenous Australias weren’t even considered to be people. They fell under the Flora and Fauna Act.

Like… WTF?

I can completely understand why there is a seemingly growing body of people who want to change the date. Some have suggested May 8th (M8—mate. Class), which, in short, would be hilarious and would greatly enhance all future Australia Day celebrations. And personally, I’m not entirely sure that I agree with continuing to denote 26th January as Australia Day when it holds uncomfortable or painful connotations and memories for the indigenous people of Australia. I’m a fan of #changethedate, which is probably a surprise to no one at all, considering I’m in the stage of evolving my social conscience in a pretty vocal way. And I think part of growing up is realising that you can still love something or someone, even when you recognise that there might be parts of them you don’t always like.

But I’m also an expat. I’m living in Oklahoma in the USA, where there are no beaches, no meat pies, no lamingtons and no roos. No thongs, or ueys, or cricket or NRL. And I miss home. I miss the fragrant eucalyptus of crushed gum leaves. I miss the way the salt hangs in the summer air, and surfing. I miss being surrounded by home, and I miss the feeling of belonging. No matter how well settled you become in another country, you always remain a foreigner.

So yes, we did celebrate Australia Day yesterday, because I love my country. I love being Australian, and all that entails, and I guess when you’re separated from your homeland, you want to share it with other people. You want to try (and yet somehow always fall short) to convey how beautiful and brilliant it is, how much you miss it, how much you love it. We felt incredibly loved and well-supported by our friends yesterday, who came in droves to celebrate with us, despite two days notice and some nippy weather.

Have a brilliant weekend everyone—feel free to spend some time googling some stunning Australian beaches and pitying me a touch.

— Ana.