All Aussies love Australia and feel blessed to be here. We feel like we’re lucky because the land is beautiful, the climate is good, the flora and fauna are wonderfully unique. We feel safe and educated and secure. In all, our great, southern, sunburnt land is the jackpot of all countries to be a citizen of, no matter which end of the lucky-spectrum we fall.
But some Aussies are unhappy about the date our government chose to call Australia Day. That date, the 26th of January, is the date Arthur Phillip put up a British flag and claimed the land uninhabited and Britain’s. Some Aussies mistakenly believe it is the date Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay. But do we care? Or do we just want to party and yell out to the world that this country is the greatest and we’re so happy to live here?
Mostly, we want to party. We want friends and family and the beach and the barbeque.
So, if the date offends a bunch of Aussies because of what it historically marks, why can’t we just change the date?
For the sake of peace, inclusion and Aussie mateship, is this really too hard?
Carla Simmons Writer 