“Southerners call it Occupation Day. We, here, in the North don’t want that victim mindset. We call it Survival Day.” Three people were sitting around the table on North Queensland’s Magnetic Island. Lind, the host, Binanjal, who has been taken in by Lind some time ago and Sindbad, the traveller, who found temporary refuge in their house. They were talking about Australia Day. In 1788 the British flag was raised by the occupying fleet on January 26th in Sydney Bay. The day was designated as an all-national holiday in the thirties and universally accepted only in the nineties, Sindbad learned. It has been controversial from the beginning and not only among aboriginals.
This is lovely - and a synchronicity. I am just reading Marlo Morgan's Mutant Message Down Under, and now this. Yes, the songs...