Tales From a Female Traveller

AUSTRALIA DAY 2006


"What does Australia Day mean to me?" I asked myself this year when contemplating what to do with my day off as my alarm rang out. Should I sleep in? Should I have a barbie? Should I go to the Australia Day concert in the city? Should I attend one of the various Citizenship ceremonies around the area? Or should I do nothing?

I lay in bed for a while asking all these questions to my half asleep brain when suddenly a light turned on and I had it. Although, the light turned out not to be an idea so much as my brother switching on the light to my bedroom to harrass me for a ride to his girlfriend's place. But I had decided, I was going to get out of the house.

Australia Day is not like any other national pride day in the world. It is unique in the sense that there is no one way to celebrate it. Anything goes. But it is similar in that it is the one day of the year where Australians really do show their pride for their country and fellow citizens. Normally, Australians are not outwardly patriotic when sport is not involved. Get us caught up in any conversation with a foreigner about any sport however, even if we don't actually follow it in everyday life, and you can be sure to have one hell of a passionate exchange on your hands.

So as I dressed and readied my kit for the day, I decided that I would head to my local celebrations along the waterfront and watch as my town, and my country, celebrated it's being.
As I wandered around the town it slowly occured to me how much I take for granted. I lead a priviledged life, living on the water, with a great job, great friends, the freedom to do what I please, when I please and I realised how much I was going to miss it all when I left for my trip. I had experienced a similar feeling when I returned home from the states after so many years of wanting to get out of my small town, but that soon fades and the mundane kicks in again making you wonder why you ever came back.


I arrived on the foreshore with this on my mind, thinking it was going to be another wash out event and my mind was quickly changed. I have never seen so much national pride centralised in one place before, come to think of it, I have never actually been to an Australia Day celebration before this. The amount of flags that dotted the crowd was astounding and I had to stop counting the amount of kids that had air brushed Aussie flag tattoos on their faces because there were just too many to keep up with. Every face I did see had a different story though. Stories of treacherous journeys through violent seas to reach safety and a new start, of generations of stolen lives reconciling with the now or of outback farmers fighting the elements to have a decent crop they can pay their bills with. And then there was my own. Born and raised in the town I was finding so boring and so unfamiliar.

So much of the time photographers are concentrating on seeing others. They are observers in the environment they are recording and ususally remain on the outside, behind the lense. It wasn't until that I was thinking about how diverse my country is that I realised I am a part of it all. I wasn't just an observer, I was a participant, celebrating Australia Day in my own way. It was at this point that I saw in those faces a face so familiar I was immediately bonded with every single person at that celebration.. my own. And suddenly, my town did not seem so unfamiliar or boring to me anymore.


It only took that moment of thinking about being somewhere else that I suddenly understood that you can never really know a place unless you live in it and get active in the community, but I also realised that you can never truly appreciate a place until you leave it, return, and see it through changed eyes. In my short moment of deliberation, looking through the lense at the lives I was capturing, it occured to me that I was no observer, I was here, celebrating my life, my country, my people, I am Australian. This was my town. As this washed over me so did my emotions and I had to stop and clean the eyepiece of my camera, when I looked back up I saw the smiling faces of not a bunch of strangers turning up for a free barbie, but my extended family. This, I thought to myself, is what Australia Day means to me.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 2:14 pm