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January 22, 2022

Dear Editor,

“The Founding of Australia. By Capt. Arthur Phillip R.N. Sydney Cove, Jan. 26th 1788”, painted 1939, oil by Algernon Talmage R.A., State Library of New South Wales, [http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110314617 ML 1222] (public domain)

This, and every other “Australia Day”:

“I can’t go back and change the beginning,; but I can start where I am today and change the ending” is what a lot of Aboriginal and other Australians should be thinking.

Perhaps many non-Aboriginal Australians should be thinking how it must feel to lose the freedom of the at-one-with-the-country/so close-to-the-land, uncomplicated, nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle the descendants of Australia’s original human occupiers don’t now have.

And just maybe many Aboriginal people should be thinking how they would now be living and what they would doing without the Royal Flying Doctor Service for remote Aboriginal communities and the physicians, surgeons, dentists, and modern-day (however imperfect) civilization by the British that they (and their children) now enjoy throughout their/our, great land this and every future 26th of January “Australia Day” (because shifting the date and/or changing its name isn’t going to fix or change anything)?

Yours,

Howard Hutchins
Victoria, Australia