January 26, 1788 : The day Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson (landing at Camp Cove), in order that King George III’s loyal servant might declare the establishment of a British penal settlement. Arfur arrived with 717 convicts on board (of whom 180 were women), “convicted of crimes in the Country of England since 1783 and … sentenced by His Majesty’s Judges to be sent to that part of New Holland known as New South Wales”, guarded by 191 marines under 19 officers. (NB. Accounts vary as to exact numbers.)
Three cheers and a loud huzzah for King George!
Long may He reign!
Invasion Day Rally
A march will start from the front of the Fitzroy Stars Gym (184 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy) @ 11am on Monday, and make its way to the Share the Spirit concert @ Treasury Gardens (Spring Street, City).
BYO banners, loudhailers and seditious chants…
Share the Spirit
The Treasury Gardens is set to come to life with a musical explosion of rock, roots, reggae and hip hop at Melbourne’s premiere Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Music Festival, Share the Spirit, on Monday 26th January.
The line-up includes Australian music legend Bart Willoughby; one of the country’s most powerful singer-songwriters, Archie Roach; Deadly award-winning performer, Ruby Hunter; Jazz aficionado, Liz Cavanagh; and the multifaceted musical melting pot that is Sol Nation. Sharing the stage will be a group of young Indigenous artists – including Little G, Rakia and DJ Deadly – from the independent Indigenous hip hop label, Payback Records.
Payback Records was established by Essendon footballer Nathan Lovett-Murray twelve months ago to create opportunities for young and talented indigenous hip hop artists to make their way in the music industry. At Share the Spirit, Melbourne audiences will have the unique opportunity of catching some of Australia’s best underground hip hop musicians on the one stage.
The festivities will kick off at 2pm with a Welcome to Country and Healing Ceremony, which will be followed by a spectacular fire dance performance by the Koori Youth Will Shake Spears and a smorgasbord of non-stop music.
Share the Spirit also plays host to the colourful Koori Market – where Indigenous artists and designers will be selling their locally made crafts, boomerangs, traditional artefacts, t-shirts, bags, CDs, homewares, photography, art and much more.
Once the sun goes down and the music stops, festival goers can continue to kick their heels up at the official after party at Section 8 in the city.
Presented by Songlines Aboriginal Music Corporation and proudly supported by the City of Melbourne, Share the Spirit is a day that has been created by Aboriginal People for all Australians to come together and celebrate the beginning of the post-Apology era.
See also : The Black Arm Band : presents music of the Australian indigenous experience. Koorie Heritage Trust : a not-for-profit Aboriginal community organisation that aims to protect, preserve and promote the living culture of Aboriginal people of south-eastern Australia. The Koori History Website.
The Clayton’s Promise: If elected, Labor will move Australia Day
Chris Graham
National Indigenous TimesNATIONAL, January 22, 2009: Astute media watchers may have noticed that over the weekend, the Rudd government began hastily promoting Australia Day 2009 as having ‘special significance’ to Indigenous people.
On Sunday, CEO of the Australia Day Council, Warren Pearson hit the media hustings with a message of unity: “We’re calling on all Australians to reflect on what we’re getting right as a nation and to get to know other cultures in the nation, particularly Indigenous culture, because Australia Day can be an important process in the reconciliation movement,” he said.
Which is of course complete horsesh*t. Reconciliation has as much to do with Australia Day as cancer does with snips and snails and puppy dog tails.
The official spin (and it’s quite a stretch but bear with me) goes something like this: Because the national apology to the Stolen Generations was delivered in February last year, and this Australia Day will be the first one since, that makes it a really, really special day for black people.
For reasons that should be blindingly obvious, January 26 is never a ‘special day’ for Aboriginal people, and never will be. Regardless, the story got a small run in mainstream media this week. And here’s why it has suddenly emerged as an issue…
Australia, IMPORTED FKN SIMIAN PIECE OF NEGRESS CRAP, and lets get the ovens raised in melbourne (January 27, 2008) | Australia Australia Australia (January 11, 2008) | Have A Slack Invasion Day… You Bastards (January 26, 2007) | John HoWARd, Fun-da-mentalist, Playing with Fire (January 21, 2007) | Racist attacks on Australia Day (January 29, 2006) | Happy 218th Birthday Australia! (January 18, 2006)
I don’t get it, what do these people ultimately want? Do they want the non-indigenous population to leave?
The old songs are still the best.
All true blue Aussies should start singing the full anthem –
“When gallant Cook from Albion sail’d, To trace wide oceans o’er, True British courage bore him on, Till he landed on our shore. Then here he raised Old England’s flag, The standard of the brave; With all her faults we love her still, “Britannia rules the waves!” In joyful strains then let us sing “Advance Australia fair!”
Our great national anthem was first performed at an Orange Hall in Sydney as befits Australia’s status as arse lickers for Anglo-US imperialism.
“True British courage” – that’s what we need.
I was born on a Dublin street where the royal drums did beat,
And those loving English feet they tramped all over us,
And each and every night when me father came home tight
He’d invite the neighbours outside with this chorus:
Come out ye Black and Tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders,
Tell them how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra.
Come tell us how you slew them poor Arabs two by two,
Like the Zulus they had spears and bows and arrows,
How you bravely faced each one with your 16-pounder gun,
And you frightened them poor natives to their marrow.
Come out ye Black and Tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders,
Tell them how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra.
Come let us hear you tell how you slandered great Parnell,
When you thought him well and truly persecuted,
Where are the sneers and jeers that you bravely let us hear
When our heroes of ’16 were executed?
Come out ye Black and Tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders,
Tell them how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra.
Well the day is coming fast and the time is here at last,
When each yeoman will be cut aside before us,
And if there be a need, sure me kids would sing, “Godspeed,”
With a verse or two of Stephen Behan’s chorus:
Come out ye Black and Tans, come out and fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders,
Tell them how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra.
“The British colonisation of Australia began at Botany Bay in 1788. It was soon met with stiff resistance from the people of the Eora Aboriginal nation, the first people to be confronted by this invasion of ‘settlers’. Led by Pemulwuy, a clever strategist, they outfoxed and outwitted the colonist for several years.
When Pemulwuy was finally captured he said in his language: ‘You’ll never make me a white man you scum!’ According to the Aboriginal history of the invasion, which has been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation, these were Pemulwuy’s last words. A British soldier summarily shot him dead. After he was shot, his head was severed from his body and sent to England to be examined, measured and analysed according to commonly accepted theories fashionable at the time.”
~ About Aboriginal Sovereignty, Waratah Rose Gillespie
“Because the invasion was illegal at international law, all white people are here illegally. Through recognizing Aboriginal sovereignty, their presence in this country can be legitimised.”
~ Isabell Coe, Wiradjuri Nation
Move Australia Day to May, says Ron Barassi
Rod Nicholson
Herald Sun
January 25, 2009
RON Barassi has called for Australia Day to be moved to May to commemorate the day Aborigines were given equal citizenship rights.
He said it was wrong to celebrate the day of the European invasion of Australia when “we took” this land from Aborigines.
Barassi, a hero who rushed to save mother-of-three Tess Green who was being bashed in St Kilda on New Year’s Eve, said he was willing to take on this new fight even if people disagreed with him.
The 10-time premiership player and coach said Australia Day should be May 27 – the day in 1967 that clauses in the Constitution that discriminated against indigenous people were removed.
In the 1967 Referendum, 90.77 per cent of Australians – the biggest majority in a national referendum – voted to enable Aboriginal people to be counted in the census and to be subject to Commonwealth laws, rather than just state laws.
Barassi said recognising the May 27 date would be the next step on the path to reconciliation.
He said it would be a natural progression after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said “sorry” to the indigenous population last year.
“Australia Day is the day put aside to focus attention on just what a great country this is. But I reckon we’re celebrating the wrong day,” he said.
“I think we should change the date of Australia Day. We were invaders and conquerors in 1788 when the First Fleet arrived and we took this land from the Aborigines.
“January 26 just doesn’t sit right with me and I’d prefer it were changed.”
Barassi, 72, said Australia’s other cultural landmark, Anzac Day, would be an inappropriate swap.
“The national day couldn’t be Anzac Day, because we were fighting a stupid war and we lost.”
Barassi said the changing the day we celebrated our nationhood would be an important symbol to the indigenous population.
“I think the day we should dedicate as Australia Day is May 27, the day Aborigines were given citizenship rights,” he said.
“I think it was the day that the native people of this land were treated as equals in our democratic country.
“It is a genuinely significant day in our history, one which we should celebrate, but which currently is totally overlooked.”
Barassi admitted he expected criticism for his stand.
Paul Justo: “Australians all let us ring Joyce, for she is young and free…”
“I don’t get it, what do these people ultimately want? Do they want the non-indigenous population to leave?”
Dunno “greg”. But I’m happy to inform you that my mate Tristan wants me to accompany him to the latest James Bond film. Ultimately, I think he’d like to build a machine and travel back in time and meet Stanley Kubrick — he’s a huge fan.
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A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson
Watkin Tench
eBooks@Adelaide
2006
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Two Classic Tales of Australian Exploration ‘1788’ by Watkin Tench and ‘Life and Adventures’ by John Nicol
Watkin Tench, John Nicol, Tim Flannery
Edited and introduced by Tim Flannery
1788
Tench, a humble captain-lieutenant of the marines, arrived on the First Fleet, and with his characteristic understanding, humanity and eye for detail, recorded the first four years of European settlement.
Life and Adventures
First published in 1822, this is the extraordinary story of a sailor who circled the globe twice, fought Napoleon’s navy, was in Hawaii just after Cook’s death, and went to Port Jackson on a Second Fleet vessel with its cargo of female convicts.
Superbly edited and introduced by Tim Flannery, this is a classic tale by a brilliant observer of the savagery and tenderness of life when the modern age was in its infancy.
Two classics, lovingly edited by Tim Flannery, author of the bestselling Throwim Way Leg and The Weather Makers.
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Interview with Professor Henry Reynolds
Reporter Quentin McDermott interviews historian Professor Henry Reynolds.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
FOUR CORNERS
August 26, 2002
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For Aboriginal sovereignty
by Gary Foley
This article is based on a speech by Gary Foley to the Rainbow Alliance conference held in Melbourne in March 1988, and subsequently published in Arena (#83, 1988)
On 26 January 1988, Aboriginal Australia celebrated and gave a great show of solidarity, an expression of our ongoing sovereignty of this country. We’ve never relinquished the sovereignty of this country. I think it is important that people realise that it’s not a question of coming and looking at the poor little old Aborigines and asking what you can do for us. I believe that we are in a position to teach you how to do the sort of things that I think you have come together to talk about at this conference.* I believe that Aboriginal Australia politically is in a very healthy position in terms of controlling our own affairs within our own community. We have an ongoing battle trying to get more resources to enable us to do the jobs that we want to do properly. But Aboriginal Australians have proven, especially in the last 20 years, that we are capable of solving our own problems if we’ve got control over the resources to do so…
First Fleet Back
http://nitv.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=112&Itemid=86
Pretty subdued this year wasn’t it? I saw there was some guy on the corner of Spring Street, stayed for an hour or so as the concert was delayed, and maybe another ten selling GLW (?!) inside.
Subdued? Dunno. You mean the rally? Also dunno what you’re talking about inre the “guy on the corner”. What guy? As for the gig, I think the last one I went to was a few years ago now… there were lots more people there today. Third time lucky: GLW sellers inside? Inside what?
I mean (most of) the marchers must have gone off somewhere else. Judging by the photos I took (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Music_festivals_in_Australia) there wasn’t much of a crowd there at all, ~3000 people turned up for the concert and around 500 of them left due to the delays. The Koori Night Market attracts more than that.
The only people I saw inside the merchandise area were selling GLW.
As greg said “I dont get it” of course you dont get it cause you dont understand it. You need to open that little rooinek [?] brain of yours!!!