Thread: Australia Day WHAT!!!

Interesting Australia Day facts.

Australia Day is celebrated on 26 January. That isn't the day that the first fleet arrived in Botany Bay (18 January), not even the day that Phillip found a good spot (21 January or so).

Six or eight days after the first fleet floats into Botany Bay a couple of French ships arrive. To paraphrase Robert Hughes, it's the equivalent of landing on the moon and having the Soviets turn up a couple of days later.

So they're all sitting there in Botany Bay, Phillip has already decided that Botany Bay is not the right spot, he's found the perfect place around the corner, so he sends the fleet to get dibs on the new spot. They make such a mess of it that they're nearly wrecked on the heads leaving Botany Bay, all under the eyes of the French. Embarassing or what?

So, Australia Day is the day we beat the French to the good seat on the bus.

Now if you want to celebrate the real colonisers Australia Day you'd be wanting to do it on the 6th February.

On that day enough tents and whatnot were set up for all of the convicts to have a spot and Phillip ordered the women convicts to be landed. Everybody, convicts included was given an extra ration of rum to celebrate.

So everyone got smashed. Sydney in the middle of summer is prone to storms, and that day was no exception. In the middle of the celebration a southerly buster and huge electrical storm hit the harbour, torrential rain, lightning strikes right in the middle of camp and knocks over a tree killing a bunch of sheep and a pig (irreplaceable livestock).

None of this stops the celebrations and to put that in perspective, imagine a thousand people who've been at sea for nine months, the convicts have been locked up for years longer than that and have barely seen a woman in that time.

Randy

Muddy

Drunk.

The next day Phillip sits them all down in front of him, convicts cross-legged in front of him, armed marines in a semi-circle around the outside and tells the lot of them off like a pack of naughty school kids. He tells them to pull their socks up or he'll have them all flogged or put to death.

Much more interesting Australia Day.

Cheers
Simon.

You're damn right there, reads. However, if the Italians gave the invading Japs their military hardware, they wouldn't have gotten much past Darwin...

GQ