Today is Australia Day. Traditionally this is the day we, as Australians, celebrate white settlement in Australia. However this has fallen out of favour recently (due largly to Aboriginal people pointing out it’s a bit harsh to celebrate the day their peoples started down the road to desperation and eradication), so slowly the 26th of January has been morphing into a kind of generic celebration of ‘Australian-ness’… whatever that means.
So, in the spirit of the season, here are my two favourite (and badly paraphrased) quotes about Australia.
Australians treat virtually everyone as a ‘mate’ because they believe, in their heart of hearts, that people everywhere are pretty much the same. But moreso in Australia.
The US was created as a puritan holy state; a religious paradise. From such lofty beginnings, it had nowhere to go but down. Australia, meanwhile, started as a dumping ground for all the refuse of European society. From the gutters, it had nowhere to look but up.