Mandy Martin, Puritjarra 2, 2005. For further information on MANDY MARTIN, refer here: http://www.mandy-martin.com/
If there are diverse kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing place, then we need to learn to value the different ways each of us sees a single place that is significant, but differently so, for each perspective.
adrift on a sea of information at a time when the world's night is a destitute time. In the age of the world's night, the abyss of the world must be endured.
--Adelaide is home. Relaxation is Victor Harbor. I'm a frustrated photographer who has lost his way in life.I have trouble coping in the technological mode of being of our complex digital world.
Time again for the annual slugfest over who gets to own the definition of Australian. Although it won't be the same without the Howard industry leading the charge.
Over at Online Opinion Audrey Apple objects to the boofy bloke version of who we are and seems to conclude that the main thing we share is a tendency to get drunk on Australia Day.
Some of us will call it Invasion Day and be accused of trying to spoil it for everyone else.
The Chooky Dancers manage to accommodate pretty much everybody.
There's a more polished version through the 7.30 report site and a comment at YouTube says it's been on Greek TV.
This is so loaded with symbolism it's hard to know where to start. A lot like the whole concept of Australia Day.
Lyn,
I find it odd to celebrate Australia day as officially understood.
It is meant to commemorate the landing of Governor Phillip at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788, and the raising of the flag. The space for the flagpole had been cleared by convicts who comprised the majority of the first European settlers.
That was not Australia --it as a colony. Australia did not come into existence until 1901 with federation. That formation of the nation-state is what we should be commemorating. Or is it?
Gary,
Lyn Spillman did an interesting study
comparing commemorations in the US and Australia.
Ambivalence over convicts and Aborigines has always been a problem for us. Federation was a desultory affair back then and people don't get excited about it now either. To confuse things further some get Gallipoli, Anzac Day and Australia Day mixed up.
This can be viewed as either a bad thing because we lack a pivotal, glorious anchor for national identity, or a good thing because it allows us to make ourselves up as we go along.
I suspect that for most people it's just a toast to Australia, the fact that we exist and wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
Lyn,
I find it odd to celebrate Australia day as officially understood.
It is meant to commemorate the landing of Governor Phillip at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788, and the raising of the flag. The space for the flagpole had been cleared by convicts who comprised the majority of the first European settlers.
That was not Australia --it as a colony. Australia did not come into existence until 1901 with federation. That formation of the nation-state is what we should be commemorating. Or is it?