27 January 2012

Australia Day, 2012

Ball-room dancers - Ruby

New Style Girl - Ruby

The Very Tall Red Man - Ruby

Boy - Nina

Cowboy - Nina?

Flowers on the hill - Grace

Nina?

Owls - Grace

Australia Day feels wrong to me. Partly because it is a holiday that occurs in the holidays, partly because it has never been associated with anything (apart from 'The Hottest 100'), but mostly because we are choosing to celebrate, as our national day, the day that saw the beginning of the dispossesion of  indigenous people from their land.

I listened to a guy from the Australia Day Committee acknowledge that Australia Day was Invasion Day and Survival Day. Good on him for saying "there is no getting away from that". He seemed to suggest, though, that we could all acknowledge the invasion and the survival, and still celebrate all the wonderful things about Australia. Can we really do all those things? On the same day?

We didn't go to the parade, or have a barbeque, or go to the beach. Instead I looked through the kids recent art work and discovered that I can no longer always tell who has done what. While my back was turned they have been changing. I've posted some here because, you know, it is supposed to be a blog about things we make. (haven't figured out how to take decent photos of art work yet.)

The kids had a water fight with their friend who'd stayed the night, we put a blanket on the kitchen table and played Cheat , we ate cherries and grapes, went down the street for a meat pie and milkshake, our neighbours showed us their new wall, we watched the second half of 'The Sound of Music' and had Indian take-away for dinner.

It seemed as Australian a way to spend the day as any.

1 comment:

  1. wow those Ballroom dancers blow me away...i had to print it out and stick it on my wall at work

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