Who We Are, Not Who We Are Not

MANY years ago I was chatting with a guy who was in the Hell’s Angels, he’d also had a long career in the military and I asked him if there were any similarities between the two.

He was a bright and articulate bloke who said, “Yes; the people who are part of both organisations have an overwhelming need to belong to a group and often how they create that sense of belonging and identity is to exclude others”.

I observed a similar phenomenon in the police force and the hospital system.

He was clearly a bright man and someone with a great deal of self-insight and I thought of him as I sat down to write this piece on Australia Day.

It is wonderful to see a renewed sense of enthusiasm about Australia Day, we have so much to celebrate in such a beautiful country.

But there is also a disturbing number of people who feel that to create a sense of identity with being Australian, it must be at the expense of others.

It is a sense my great, great, great, grandmother as a 16 year old Irish immigrant, with her 14 year old little sister in tow, would have felt when they arrived alone in the new colony in the early 1800’s.

The news reports described how terrible the Irish were and a scourge on the land with their “fat ankles”, thankfully not something I inherited.

At the same time some of my other ancestors were wealthy English settlers being handed areas of the Sydney Harbour, with streets that still bear their names.

And as Eliza Bergan, the Irish orphan, passed through what was the settlement of Scone on her way to Gunnedah, which was beyond the edge of civilisation in the colony and at the other end of the world, she would have passed through Wonnarua country where my great, great, great, great grandmother was likely slaughtered by the white invaders.

But even for those of us with a family that dates back to the beginning of the colony or the traditional owners of this land, it does not an Australian make.

Being Australian is something that should unite all of us who choose to call this place home no matter what your linage, background, colour or creed.

There are many differences between us as Australians, but there is something bigger that draws us together, a bit like the dynamic between Australians and Kiwis.

I travelled through China after Uni with my dearest friend Nancy Lee, an Aberdeen girl whose parents were the Fong’s, the market gardeners outside Aberdeen, of Asian lineage that have been here since the 1800’s too.

We were all very inebriated on jugs of Chinese beer in downtown Guangzhou with students from all corners of the world and predictably the Aussies and the Kiwis began ‘taking the piss’ out of one another.

The students from every other country understood the sport and laughed along, while paying the price of another jug of beer, until a group of American students arrived who were affronted by us ‘taking the piss’.

Apparently what we were doing was akin to burning a flag and all manner of things completely lost on everyone else after the second jug of beer, except the Americans.

What they failed to anticipate is that Aussies and Kiwis are like siblings and should a third party enter the fray we will always unite to take them down.

It is always Australian to ‘take the piss’, but always in a kind-hearted way.

What I love about Australia is that we are staunchly egalitarian, will give everyone ‘a go’, pull together when needed and we have all built a life together.

So this Australia Day can we leave all the rubbish about out-Australian-ing each other, or ostracising others in order to make us feel more Australian and recognise that we are all Australians who are lucky, not entitled, but lucky to call this place home?

Happy Australia Day

 

 

 

Elizabeth Flaherty
Editor
scone.com.au