Matthew Camenzuli@Matt_Camenzuli
Tomorrow is Australia Day and I often wonder what Australia would be if the British did not come and form a delicate settlement on the other side of the world, here on the great southern land.
Would the land have been simply left un-colonised? Would it have remained an untamed wilderness? Without modern buildings, hospitals, places of worship, schools and skyscrapers. Without the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, MCG in Melbourne, Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, Perth Bell Tower, 2KW building in Adelaide, IXL buildings in Hobart, no Mindil Beach Sunset Markets in Darwin, and certainly no Parliament House in Canberra, old or new.
Would she have stood defiantly bridging the Pacific and Indian oceans. Withstood sail giving way to steam, and steam to diesel? As the world encroached, hungry for land and riches?
Would the various Indigenous tribes have moved past their storied and earthy culture and into the modern era?
Would they have stood against the tide of progress?
It is hard to imagine.
Whilst colonisation was not without its regrettable actions, and modern Australia not without its failings, the world and the forces that drive us tend toward order. Some nation, some Empire somewhere would indeed have claimed this land.
I am glad it was the Europeans, and specifically the British.
I do not dismiss the criticisms of some of the methods of the day. That was an era where people treated each other very differently and in most of the world. People were executed for things like petty theft. Ideas that today would have us recoil in shock.
It is not just to hold modern people responsible for the standards of the past. It is important that we do indeed remember those darker moments and ideas to ensure we don’t go backwards as a people.
We remember ANZAC day, not to glorify war, but to remind the next generation of its cost.
People in power often make mistakes, and they are rarely held accountable. Even to this day they are too often beyond accountability. But those of us that do not hold the reigns of power suffer the punishment for their actions.
Australia, for all its flaws and failings, has been a spectacular success. Drawn out from the red dirt, by the sheer will of a strong and resilient people. It was not the Governor who tamed the land and built the buildings.
Similarly, it is not the Prime Minister that digs the ore, mills the steel, shears the sheep and builds the homes that have built our modern Australia.
On Australia Day, we do not celebrate the deeds and misdeeds of the few in leadership, but the works of our fellow Australian; be they Indigenous, British settlers, European immigrants and those from other parts of the world that have chosen Australia as their nation.
We celebrate each other, and our contributions, and we celebrate our vast and untapped potential, here on this great southern land.
We celebrate home.
The seeds of our modern Australia were sown on the 26th of January 1788.
So, we celebrate together on that day. I remember a time when that celebration was all but universal. It must be again.
Long may we have cause to love our home.
I just want Australia back.
