Australia Day

Australian National Anthem - Advance Australia Fair


Waltzing Matilda

Just a little bit of Patriotism for the best Country in the Hemisphere, I say

WHEN YOU'VE GOT YORRO YORRO, YOU DON'T NEED A FLAG

Woz submitted today's thread header about patriotism at DCP

This may be too Australian - however, patriotism I believe, has caused more harm than good in latter years. Patriotism has become an excuse to hate, an excuse to suspect, an excuse to rape, an excuse to kill and to plunder. We need to redefine patriotism and nationalism. And in so doing we may redefine our image in the rest of the world.
The headline and quoted passages for this post are from Australian artist, cartoonist and writer, Michael Leunig. He is writing on Australia Day January 26, 2008. Leunig is remarkable in his talent for stating the most gigantic conundrum in a tiny little drawing or a few words.
Since 9/11/2001 our leaders have urged us all to rise up in our fervor of nationalistic pride and hate and invade countries to kill others. And we've acquiesced. Out of fear. His story of his Aboriginal friend who taught him the meaning of yorro yorro, is worth sharing
.......
Earnest nationalism has never taken root in Australia and most seem to like it that way.
IT'S AUSTRALIA DAY AND ALL the flags and words are flying in the breeze. It is a day of fantasy, because nobody really seems to understand what it's all about and nobody seems to care too much, either. Perhaps it suits the temperament of the bewildering Australian landmass that the national song, the national day and the national flag are all rather wonky and not up to the task of nationalism somehow, and seem quite naturally and pleasantly just a bit insignificant.
The citizens, in their wisdom, seem mostly content with this quaintly ramshackle situation, sensing that the failure of earnest nationalism to take root in Australia is a blessing that constitutes for them a very special and delightful freedom.
Many Australians regard their flag and song and national day, not so much with awe, but rather, a casual, bemused affection, in the way that we may regard an eccentric uncle or a peculiar spinster aunty. They are ours but they are not us.
---snip---
Many Australians regard their flag and song and national day, not so much with awe, but rather, a casual, bemused affection, in the way that we may regard an eccentric uncle or a peculiar spinster aunty. They are ours but they are not us.
Perhaps it is a sign of political health and great good fortune that these symbolic national devices continue to be slightly lame and pleasantly uninspiring to the nation. In spite of the perfunctory efforts of weary public officials and headmasters to solemnise the Australian identity and its symbols, it appears that the citizens of the southern land are inclined to be a shrugging, winking sort of people rather than the saluting kind; a people who don't want nationalistic things to function too well — with the obvious exception of sport.
Our dawdling and dysfunctional national song, for instance, works about as well as they want a national anthem to work and I suspect that many Australians quite enjoy its wacky dullness and the fact that they can't remember the words and regard this mass forgetfulness a wonderful, convivial joke.
My youngest son grew up believing the opening line for the anthem was:
"Australians all eat ostriches

For we are young at three".
I think this is a great improvement on the official version and no doubt there are other fabulous and worthy variations floating about in the minds of Australian children.
How wise and liberal of the government, to bestow to its people an anthem with a do-it-yourself component; an anthem wherein the citizens may innovate and roam or giggle and get lost and feel completely free. How inspiring can you get!
* * *
But of course there are those who take nationalism and its artefacts terribly seriously, and for them Australia Day is an important feast, with no shortage of flags and fulsome speeches to satisfy the strongest appetite for national identity.
There is an experiment with American-style patriotism but this will fizzle out and the urban masses will continue to head off to the fleshpots and beaches to celebrate their globalism where there are only three identities: the rich, the poor and the frantic slaves in the middle. And so it will proceed.
* * *
---snip---
* * *
I once lived in a small town in central Victoria, and there it was my good fortune to dwell in a house across the street from a little old lady named Mrs Heggie. She was a bright soul and I often found her rustling about like a wren in her front garden and took delight in chatting with her about whatever was at hand. One autumn morning we were talking about the news: a ghastly story of a young woman taken by a crocodile in the Prince Regent River of north-west Australia.
"Frightful creatures those big crocodiles," offered my neighbour, and I told her how I had only just recently met an old indigenous man from that country and how much he had enchanted me as he spoke about the beautiful dangers of life up there in the Kimberley.
"Oh yes, and who would that be?" inquired Mrs Heggie in the most excited and unusually pointed way.
"David Mowaljarlai was his name," I replied.
"Oh, and how is David these days?" she inquired in a matter-of-fact voice.
After a moment of blank incomprehension, I told her that he seemed fine and thought that perhaps she had misheard me or was having a mixed-up dotty moment and inquiring after somebody in her imagination.
"Do you know of David Mowaljarlai?" I asked.
"Oh yes, he was such a lovely young man; he rescued me from the plane crash."
What then followed in the sunshine of our quiet little street was Mrs Heggie's astonishing story. She had worked on a mission in Kimberley during the 1930s where cyclones and pirates could suddenly descend from the sea to terrorise the community, and where the giant black crocodiles roamed freely along the river banks and shores of a wild land.
One day she had made a long and difficult journey in the region to attend to some practical business and was offered a quick ride back to the mission in a biplane piloted by a Salvation Army missionary.
"He was a good pilot but a dreadful navigator," recalled Mrs Heggie.
The plane got lost and ran out of fuel, resulting in an emergency landing on a mangrove flat surrounded by deep water and crocodiles in the Prince Regent River.
"We sat on the wings for nearly a week listening to the crocodiles underneath us at night and drank water we collected from the fabric of the plane. The Salvation Army man lost his nerve and I had to spend all my energy trying to calm him down. He was a terrible sook and this annoyed me very much.
"I told him that David from the mission would find us, as I believed he would. David and I had a special understanding of each other and he always seemed to know where I'd be.
"One morning I looked up and there across the water at the edge of the bush was David with his lovely smile. He had found us. He had the most beautiful smile. But you know, to this day, whenever the Salvation Army people come collecting at my door, I give them a donation but I always feel annoyed because of that pilot behaving like a frightened child — he really wasn't much help."
In later life David Mowaljarlai travelled the country and spoke urgently and eloquently of his concern for the wellbeing of white society, which he could see was suffering from a loss of spirit and an incomprehension of the land in which it lived.
His integrity and wisdom often included an important word from his Ngarinyin language: a word that could be very useful to this country in these depressed and anxious times. I use it often.
"Yorro-yorro" is the word — and it means "everything standing up alive" or "the spirit in the land that makes everything stand up alive".
Mrs Heggie had lots of yorro-yorro.
"Each day faces you like a murderer," said Mowaljarlai also — but he said it as an enlivening truth to stimulate the spirit and to remind us of yorro-yorro.
It's a beautiful Wandjina country word to use on Australia Day — or any other day, for that matter. David Mowaljarlai gave it to us and left us with it.
When you've got yorro-yorro you don't need a flag.