The Not So Long History of January 26 and Australia Day

Consistently, January 26 and the debate surrounding the debate becomes fuel for endless settler culture wars and nationalist myth-making in Australia.

This year, Opposition leader Peter Dutton called for a boycott of Woolworths after the supermarket chain announced it would not be selling Australia Day merchandise. Recent polling about public support for Australia Day then inspired the Institute of Public Affairs, a conservative think-tank with considerable sway, to proclaim that opposition to Australia Day is “a continued, relentless campaign by inner-city elites, the political class, big business, and civil society to cancel our national day.”

But January 26 has always been a problem for First Nations people. Consistent community protest predates the public holiday even existing. “Australia Day” as it is now known – a free day off to celebrate all the greatness of being “Australian” – is a relatively recent creation with murky and complicated roots. In fact, it was only in 1994 that the Paul Keating Labor Government announced it would become a national public holiday.

A (not so) long history

January 26, 1788, is the day the First Fleet, captained by Arthur Phillip, invaded Warrane/Sydney Cove and violated First Nations sovereignty, raising the Union Jack to claim the continent for King George III. 

The landing was met with resistance from Gadigal people and surrounding clan groups, and this was replicated by First Nations all over the country, as the colonies violently occupied Aboriginal land and denigrated traditional social, cultural and political systems of governance. Particularly, the level of conflict occurring in the first 140 years of colonisation is referred to as “The Frontier Wars” by Australian historians, academics and First Nations community. First Nations people have undoubtedly had a historical opposition to the settler-colonial project.

Before 1888, New South Wales was the only colony in Australia to recognise January 26 as a date of celebration, calling it “Anniversary Day”, “First Landing Day” and “Foundation Day” - not “Australia Day”. This event was centred around Sydney and was typically celebrated by ex-convicts holding dinners. 

Broadly, across Australia, January 26 was seen as a date more relevant to the history of the New South Wales colony and ex-convicts, with the sister colonies of South Australia, Western Australia, and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) having different celebratory days.

These other colonial celebration dates include December 1 for “Hobart Regatta Day” in Tasmania and, in Western Australia, June 1 for “Foundation Day” and December 28 for “Proclamation Day”. While different to January 26 there is a consistent theme: all these days celebrate and commemorate the ‘finding’, ‘discovery’ or ‘establishment’ of a British colony on sovereign Aboriginal land. 

The first ever official national day referred to as “Australia Day” was actually on July 30, 1915. This event was to stir up national pride in order to fundraise for World War 1 and was repeated in subsequent years to raise money for the war effort on July 28 in 1916, July 27 in 1917 and July 26 in 1918.

In 1935, most Australian states were recognising January 26 as “Australia Day” except for New South Wales, which still referred to the date as Anniversary Day. It wasn’t until 1946 that all states adopted both the date, the name and declared their own state-based public holidays, although the public holiday did not consistently fall on January 26 and was sometimes put to the nearest Monday. In 1960, the Australian of the Year Award became a civic ritual used to further embed a national focus on January 26. 

History shows that Australia Day is not some sacred and well-established tradition dating back centuries. It is also not a concept that has been historically unopposed, especially by First Nations people. Beyond First Nations resistance to attempted genocide and violence since 1788, foundational Aboriginal protest to the creation of Australia Day still predates the national public holiday. 

The 1938 Aboriginal Day of Mourning Protest was a multiple years long effort to have a proactive response, from the Aboriginal community, to the 150th anniversary celebrations of Captain Arthur Phillip’s landing.  Members of the civil rights organisation, the Aborigines Progressive Association, planned the protest after many attempted appeals to the King, state and federal governments to improve the conditions of Indigenous people. 

The 100 person Aboriginal delegation, with members from different Aboriginal nations across Victoria and New South Wales, was chaperoned by a 1000 person silent march of Black and white people to Australia Hall in Sydney’s CBD. Some of the Aborigines Progressive Association members wore all black to symbolise mourning, despite how hot the day was.

This protest is momentous for not only being the first national gathering of Indigenous people in Australia, which was difficult to achieve as it was illegal for Aboriginal people to move freely across the country, but has since been recognised as one of the first civil rights gatherings globally.

The meeting in Australia Hall was only open to “Aborigines and Persons of Aboriginal Blood..." where, after being forced to take the back entrance as Black people were not allowed to use the front, the 100 people convened to discuss the issues affecting their communities, to vote on a demand for equal citizenship rights and to officially declare January 26 as a Day of Mourning. Many of these points were outlined in the manifesto Aborigines Claim Citizens' Rights, written by Aborigines Progressive Association President Jack Patten and Secretary William Ferguson. Patten and Ferguson’s manifesto asks Australians celebrating the 150th anniversary of the First Fleet a question that is still relevant to conversations First Nations people are having decades later. 

“The 26th of January, 1938, is not a day of rejoicing for Australia’s Aborigines; it is a day of mourning,” Patten and Ferguson say, “This festival of 150 years so-called “progress” in Australia commemorates also 150 years of misery and degradation imposed upon the original native inhabitants by the white invaders of this country. 

We, representing the Aborigines, now ask you, the reader of this appeal, to pause in the midst of your sesqui-centenary rejoicings and ask yourself honestly whether your ‘conscience’ is clear in regard to the treatment of the Australian blacks by the Australian whites during the period of 150 years’ history which you celebrate?”

Last year, we saw how easily the Prime Minister could call a National Day of mourning for the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Yet First Nations people’s consistently declared and observed Day of Mourning has gone federally unrecognised for 86 years. 

Despite being one the oldest civil rights gatherings in the world, settlers never fail to compare the Day of Mourning to the nationalist myth-making of Australia Day. As history shows, the concept of a national day in this country has consistently undergone reinvention to suit the agenda of the colonial project. There is no well established tradition to hark back to. No important ritual to protect. 

For First Nations people however, there is an enduring legacy of fighting to ensure the survival of culture, kin and Country. There has been opposition to the creation of Australia since 1788 as well as opposition to the creation of Australia Day since 1938. 

Truthfully, it is the First Nations tradition of resistance and protest that has a much firmer foundation than any public holiday. 

Phoebe is McIlwraith is a Bundjalung and Worimi dubay/galbaan writer and content producer based in ‘Sydney’.