Postkiwi Duncan Macleod

Yesterday we celebrated Australia Day by taking part in the Robina Great Aussie Breakfast, an event organised by Robina Surfers Paradise Uniting Church. It’s a free cooked breakfast for 2,500 people, with entertainment laid on for the whole family. There was gumboot throwing, face painting, stick-on Australian tattoos and a fashion parade featuring garments from the church’s second hand clothes shop.

My 18 year old son Lachlan had a 20-minute gig – singing Australian songs. I came along as guitarist/keyboards/backing vocalist. We sang the traditional “Moreton Bay”, Rolf Harris’ “Tie Me Kangaroo Down”, Slim Dusty’s “Love to Have a Beer with Duncan”, Max Merritt’s “Slipping Away”, Crowded House “Better Be Home Soon”, and Tripod’s “Place Where We Found That Body”.

I was talking to a member of the church who I’d worked with back in 2001, when I was on staff there, who had recognised neither me nor Lachlan on stage. It was the beard and sunglasses. The disguise is working well.

Bruce Mullan’s written up the story at Journey Online.

One of the stories not written up so often is the ongoing hurt of a country that celebrates its national holiday by focusing on the arrival of Europeans in a country inhabited by the Aborigines. January 26 is the day in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip took formal possession of the colony of New South Wales and became its first Governor. We still have the challenge of extending our sense of national identity beyond the beginning of European settlement and back through to ‘Dreamtime’.

For more on Australia Day see the Government web site.