Australia Day

Australia's national holiday, inventively titled "Australia Day", was last Tuesday, the 26th of January. It was on January 26th, 1788 that the First Fleet arrived in Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) and established the settlement of Sydney. Some indigenous people call it Invasion Day and use the occasion to bring attention to indigenous issues. The celebration usually involves fireworks and is much like Canada Day, I suppose. Since I missed most of the celebrations last year, I thought I would take the opportunity to see what was going on.

The first order of the day was a shift at the Garema Place outlet of ACTTAB. I was actually quite thrilled since I get double pay on public holidays. Even though it abuts onto a major urban square, there was virtually no one in the outlet. To put it more accurately, there was virtually no one in the square. Even though it's a pedestrian mall, there were no buskers, face painters, or anyone else you would associate with a major national holiday. In Ottawa, Sparks Street is full of activity on Canada Day but here there was only silence. Anyway, since no one was coming in, my shift only lasted 3 hours. I thought this would give me plenty of time to see how Canberra celebrated Australia Day.

The result was rather anticlimactic. I biked down to Commonwealth Park by Lake Burley Griffin, which is the center of the festivities. There really wasn't all that much going on. There was a dragon boat race, some musical numbers from a stage and a few kiosks set up but that's really it. It wasn't at all what I expected of a national celebration in a national capital. Really, people were just sitting around. The fireworks weren't scheduled to start until 21:00 so I left and came back. The fireworks display was spectacular in that the fireworks are fired off a bridge and a few boats nearby. This means that, unlike Canada, you're relatively close to the pyrotechnics. There were screamers, boomers, Roman candles, magnesium flares and everything else you'd expect. This went on for about 10 minutes and then everyone left to go home. As I said before, I think anticlimactic is the best word to describe it. There just wasn't the atmosphere or other physical examples of celebration. If Canberra is to shed its image as a backwater that no one would even think about except for the fact that it's the national capital, then I think it should endeavour to have Australia Day celebrations of a scope worthy of a national capital.

Aside from Australia Day, the only other piece of interesting news is that umpire training has started. Although it's still about 10 weeks until the season begins, we are meeting to get ourselves in the physical form that is required. My running has helped somewhat and I ran further than I could have otherwise but it's still gruelling, even at a jogging pace. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I have a feeling that I'll improve as the weather chills since I'll be more in my element and the denser air will help me oxygenate more efficiently. Although, in a point of pride, I did beat the AFL's goal umpire 4km time. The AFL standard was (they've since changed the length to 5km) 18:30 and I did it in 18:22, although I was absolutely finished by the end. Still, it means I'm getting better and, with any luck, as the training year progresses, I may find myself in top form.

Finally, I've posted photos from my last day at Sokil in the appropriate update.