I recently experienced my first Australia Day and what I found was so horrifying and upsetting that I felt it important enough to write this blog post.
Australia Day takes place on January 26th every year. It’s a national holiday here in Australia where most take the day off work, gather with friends and family, eat, drink and be merry. For the indigenous aboriginals of Australia the day could not be any further from that reality.
On January 26th 1788 the British landed on Australian soil and declared their ownership of the land. What proceeded was the mass slaughter of thousands of aboriginals as Europeans flocked to the new found land. Torture, rape, introduced disease and mass enslavement were all inflicted upon the indigenous people and it was the aim of the invading Europeans to completely irradicate the lands rightful owners from existence. Their mission was almost completely successful, today only a few dispersed populations of true aboriginals remain in Australia. Those that I have seen myself have been homeless, hungry and mostly ignored by the millions of people that pass them by every single day in the now over crowded developments of modern Australia.
What I came to realise in my constant battle with this day was that this is happening/has happened all over the world! Why as humans do we feel the need to take from others? Why do we feel as though owning something regardless of our experience or investment in it will make us better off compared to others? Why do we have a hierarchy amongst people? I believe in total equality, we are all born the same and we will all die the same, why should one take from another? What does that actually achieve?
If we are to live as ethically as possible it is important that we stop trying to get one over on each other. We must fully understand that there is more than enough of everything to ensure that we all have happy fulfilled lives. Greed only creates animosity and breeds a culture of jealousy, hatred and unhappiness. Understand that there is enough for you and your neighbour whether they are the same as you or not!
The only explanation I could come up with about all of this crime against others is that the majority of us are living in fear, either fear of the unknown or fear of being left behind. Surely if we understood that the Unknown could be empowering and educational we wouldn’t try to destroy it. Surely if we understood that someone else’s success is not our own failure then we could irradicate this fear and live more peacefully? The Without rambling too much about inequality and fear, I guess what ‘Australia Day’ highlighted for me was the pain of the human condition and that we all need to show a little more love and compassion and that this needs to filter through the masses so that our governments and leaders have no choice but to listen and to look after all their citizens equally!
If you have experienced Australia Day as a tourist I would love to hear your take on the events that take place. If you are Australian please also share with me your thoughts as someone who has grown up in the Australian culture. Most importantly thank you to everyone who reads my blogs each week, you are all so greatly appreciated and if there are any topics you’d like me to cover in the future then please just drop me a message.
To continue following my travels through Australia please follow my Instagram page @zero_hero_movement and feel free to get in contact with me there too. Connecting with the amazing online community of those seeking to live a more ethical life is really important to me and there are many new projects here at ZHM in the pipeline so watch this space! Until then,