Australia Day: what are we celebrating exactly?

‘Lambassador’ Sam Kekovich appears in this year’s annual lamb commercial. Picture: Supplied

This year Sam Kekovich finally gave up describing what it means to be Australian. The only ­distinguishing feature of the people of this wide land, he said in the annual lamb commercial, is that everyone is a bit un-Australian. Put down the tongs.

So, many are approaching our national day with a shrug. What are we celebrating? I dunno. How are we celebrating it? With a barbecue, I guess, is anyone vegan? Why are we celebrating it on this day? Don’t want to talk about that.

If Sam can’t stand in front of a barbecue and remind us of what we are, there are probably a few good reasons. Let’s explore them.

As the lamb ad says, we’re a mixed bunch. We’re no longer Kev and Sheila. Kev, the white bloke with a wry wit and a big heart for those who don’t rub him the wrong way. Sheila, who’s probably a bartender with a low-cut blouse and a quick retort and, even if she isn’t a bar maid, she could still pour a beer with a head.

Half of us had parents born elsewhere, a third of us were born elsewhere and four million have arrived since the 2000 Olympics.

So, fewer share a history with the continent that goes back further than 50 years and even those that share a longer history with the place are still debating that history. Statues disappear, buildings are renamed and conflicts once brushed over are newly documented.

Tentative territory this.

Much of our old culture is questionable. Jokes that are meant to be irreverent are out of order. Pranks don’t comply with OH&S rules. Songs are tweaked (Advance Australia, fair?). Special days are flexing as companies let staff select days that are special to them rather than days made official on calendars. And none of us refer to the quarter-acre dream, not just because developers have squeezed us into 0.03-acre blocks but because a new generation can’t afford a walk-up flat, much less a house. Even the idea that each generation will do better than the last is hard to sustain.

We can and do tear old ways apart and each tear in the fabric of the common is sensible and often needed, but they contribute to the fraying of us. Except for Anzac Day, which unites us in grief – and sharks, which unite us in horror. (Except we can’t agree about netting them. Or killing them when they eat one of us. Or whether they belong in fish and chips wrappers.)

Is any other country as confused as we are? Does any other country wear its cloak with such uncertainty? “What’s Australia like?” a tourist might ask. “I dunno” seems like a rude answer but it’s close to the truth.

Does it matter, though, this sense of being unmoored, demasted as we toast a day that’s just another public holiday – a day that wasn’t much of a thing before the big bash of 1988, then got huge around the year of the Olympics when Australia was a hot ticket and now, as more reflect on what actually happened on that day and what it meant to original Australians, is marked by reservations. Wear a flag or a black arm band?

Still, if nationality is a blank space, that’s not a bad place to start. It’s a chance to go beyond ­customs and embrace the intangible – the values old and renewed. The willingness to pitch in ­during emergencies, the disdain for pomposity, the openness to others, the tolerance for stuff we don’t get and the gist of being Australian.

It’s not who we are or what we were but what we do that makes us us.

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