Date: January 26, 2025Author: Editor, cairnsnews 17 Comments
The Founding of Australia by Captain Arthur Phillip RN, Sydney Cove, Jan 26, 1788, by Algernon Talmage, 1937. State Library NSW
By Alison Bevege
January 26 is not just Australia Day, it was the first settlement of Sydney.
The First Fleet set up camp in Sydney Cove on 26 January, 1788. Eleven ships of British colonists and convicts hacked the beginnings of a modern city out of sandstone and bush.
You would think City of Sydney Council might do some small thing to commemorate this, but there’s not an Australian flag or a Captain Arthur Phillip in sight.
The Council has given $2 million to celebrate Chinese New Year over 19 days of festivities instead.
The Council calls it “Sydney Lunar Festival” as if it were home-grown instead of a Chinese cultural tradition more than 3500 years old, possibly emanating from the Shang Dynasty.
“For Sydney Lunar (Lunatic) Festival 2025, the City of Sydney has committed around $2 million to support the delivery of the 19-day festival. The funds include all aspects of a festival of this scale including: decorations, artwork, promotions, activities, events, crowd control and security,” a spokesman said via email.
Everyone loves a spectacle: the lion dances are great, the night markets popular, there’s Chinese balloon art for the kids. There’s almost three weeks of taxpayer-funded spectaculars starting January 30.
But shouldn’t we be seeing some public celebration of our colonial heritage, too?
No. City of Sydney Council is marking January 26 – with the Yabun Aboriginal festival.
Normal Australians not welcome.
The tone of Yabun is shown by the Land Back book launch, described as: “Aboriginal land rights recognition in 1983 came after nearly 200 years of violent colonial dispossession and the near-complete loss of land. For over 40 years, NSW Aboriginal people have worked to restore their Country and people.”
The Council allocated $840,000 (over four years) for the Gadigal Information Service Aboriginal Corporation (who runs Redfern’s Koori Radio) to put Yabun on January 26.
The Aboriginal industry sucks more than $40 billion annually from government yet it will put out its hand at every opportunity.
The Yabun Festival has a stack of other sponsors including the NSW Government, several sub-agencies of the NSW Government and the Federal Government.
They are all pouring your tax dollars into an event that ties celebrating Aboriginal culture with demonising British Colonial heritage – as if you have to hurt one people to build up another. As if we can’t celebrate both.
They also sell merchandise.
You hear a lot about “Welcome to Country” (this is MY land, you’re a visitor), “Survival Day” (we survived YOU), and the hostile “Invasion Day”.
We are not being taught to celebrate Aboriginal culture. We are being taught to hate our British colonial foundations.
We have the Invasion Day protest and march on January 26. Amnesty has issued an activist toolkit condemning any celebration on that day.
Colonial heritage is now only ignored or demonised on its founding day. Almost every year now, a Captain Cook statue is vandalised – and he wasn’t even on the First Fleet.
Taxpayers can expect no relief from a Liberal government either. Labor and Liberal are joined at the hip when it comes to blackfellas and nearly everything else.
Trump is restructuring America it’s time to start on its poor cousin, Australia.
Nelle's journey 