Australia Day 2065 won't be on January 26 Australia Day 2065 won't be on January 26 
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Australia Day 2065 won't be on January 26 



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                January 23, 2015 - 1:05PM




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Sam de Brito
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Whose country is my country?
Are we really multi-racial or just a jingoist's dream. Rocco Fazzari and Denis Carnahan, with apologies to Hoodoo Gurus.
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"It's hard to believe the first settlers once looked at that view in absolute despair, isn't it?"My mate and I were watching the sunset on the harbour, very near Sydney Cove, where a little over two hundred years ago, a thousand white settlers came close to starvation as they battled to establish the colony that would become modern Australia.Whatever your political, moral or racial views on this event, it's hard to argue with the magic of the country we inherited and the nation we have become. 

                                Australia Day one, 1788.

Many will celebrate this Monday in much the same manner it has been for the last 20 years or so - jingoistically, with too much alcohol and the music you liked nine months ago, thanks to the increasingly naff Hottest 100.
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What appears certain, however, is Australia Day will one day not be celebrated on January 26. It may take ten years, or even 50, but we will reach a critical mass in this country where we understand that having our Indigenous brothers and sisters join us at the party is more important than "historical accuracy".The people who disagree will just die off, their prejudices, hopes and fears consigned to oblivion. If you doubt this, take a moment to ponder the sentiment encapsulated by the lead paragraph.Two centuries ago - a mere blink of time - the same views people now pay tens of millions to own were the most hostile panorama imaginable for whites. Thanks to their presence, this was even more so the case for blacks.Looking at the images of Sydney Cove then and now, it's hard to conceive just how far we've come, how much has changed.Whatever nook you call home in our vast universe, the one constant is time and it streams away from us in both directions. It's often not until we see a long-lost friend or visit a childhood haunt we percieve how rapidly it moves.I went to my once beloved local pub on Wednesday night and walked around the upstairs bar like I was in a dream.What had been an expanse of green felt pool tables and cigarette smoke was now filled by a stage where two people in space suits and helmets did a Daft Punk impersonation. Their DJ decks had enough processing power to run the Russian military in 1986.Kids danced to music I barely recognised, while their friends smoked butts in a sealed, exhaust-filtered glass room that looked like it was from a Jetsons cartoon.Many of those "kids" will no doubt be some of the drunkest and most vocal celebrants Monday, but they too will get old and take with them values their offspring find outmoded. Their thoughts on what is right or wrong will matter just as little as ours. Their grandchildren will decide what Australia Day will become.Ten years ago we couldn't imagine not smoking in a pub. Twenty years ago, we wondered how we'd get home from same not driving drunk. Six years ago many people could not comprehend a black US president.The wheel of culture turns relentlessly, yet if we're looking for the defining virtue of recent generations, it's their enlargement of moral sympathy to include both sexes, all races, most religions, the disabled - even animals and the environment.We will also one day recognise the trauma and displacement of Indigenous people in this country, at a cellular level. It'll go without saying.Understanding the fluidity of time, the great river we all stand in, however, makes me want to honour the people I share my age with and certainly not be party to exacerbating their suffering.One day, soon enough, we'll see that just as clearly about Australia Day, as we do women's rights, gay marriage and torturing animals.I hope I'm around to see it. You can follow Sam on Twitter here. His email address is here.















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