Today, on Australia Day, we celebrate our privilege to live in a democratic country, with clean air, clean water, fresh food, good health care, accessible education for all and a beautiful, extraordinary, challenging, inspiring landscape. Everyone loves the land of their birth – we get that – but we also understand why so many want to leave their homeland to live here instead. Why wouldn’t they? It’s the best place on earth. I met a chap, who’d emigrated from Ghana, who told me that living here was like living in Paradise. Today will be the day many people will become citizens of Australia. Welcome to Oz! Thanks for wanting to be one of us.

I was very moved to see the finalists in the Australian of the Year award. They were a diverse group: different ethnicities, different colours, different cultural backgrounds, yet they were all passionately Australian. They were all people trying to make a difference in the world, and in their local communities. I loved the fact that an Indigenous man won the Local Hero award, for helping to change his disadvantaged community. I love that an Afghan refugee was the Young Australian of the year, for his work mentoring Indigenous children in a remote part of his state. I love that an 81-year old  doctor won the Senior award for his pioneering work in palliative care. And he’s still working! A wonderful, intelligent and extremely hard-working woman won the main award for her years and years of work in journalism, media and her volunteer work with numerous medical charities. What a wonderful mix of fabulous, inspirational people. GOOD ON YA.

I’ve been thinking about what makes us distinctly Aussie. This is where my mind wandered to… When I started high school it was the first year the school was open. My fellow students were both first years and seniors all in one go. We had the unique experience of being the senior class all the way through high school. I remember when we went to our first Inter-School sports day. All the established schools were there with their screaming, chanting hordes of students, having arrived in fleets of buses and private cars. Our little group went in two bus-loads. We sat in one tiny corner of the stadium, completely surrounded. Yet, our athletes won several medals and you should have heard us: we were the mouse that roared. I think this encapsulates the Aussie spirit.

We’re a small number of people in a vast and mostly inhospitable landscape. In the history of the world, we’re the new kids on the block. As a people we had to learn, very early on, to be resourceful and inventive, to respect the land in which we lived (or it could kill you) and to rely on each other. The spirit of “mateship” was forged on the fields of Eureka, the shores of Gallipoli, the Somme, Ypres, the Kokoda Trail and the jungles of Vietnam. Our soldiers gained a reputation as irreverent larrikins who snubbed their noses at authority but who fought with the strength of a lion and the cunning of a fox: a reputation they maintain to this day. Our reliance on mateship was hardened out in the desert, during severe droughts, and while fighting floods and raging bushfires. Whenever a natural disaster hits some of our people, the rest of the nation rallies around them like one big family. In the midst of our woes, we see the best of ourselves.

I’ve often seen and heard foreigners comment on our use of the word, “mate”. They know it means a good friend, but they don’t understand why we also call complete strangers: mate. It’s even more confusing when we say “mate” and yet we obviously mean the opposite. It’s simple. Whether we consciously know it, or if it’s a subliminal subconscious idea, we know we’re all in this together. We’re still the few in a vast land. If you’re an Aussie, you’re my mate. If you’re a visitor to Oz, you’re a potential mate. If you’re my enemy, you could become my mate. We’re a weird mob but that’s what makes us, us.

Happy Australia day, mate!

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