Timothy Tam
Charis is furious. She is mad as hell! She feels that people aren’t accepting her as a fellow Australian.
I am as shocked as you are dear reader. Seems that implying just being born somewhere, drinking beer and cooking meat on a branded BBQ just doesn’t qualify you?
Who would’ve thought?
I mean it’s not like every other people on Earth is entitled to have an ethnic-religious-cultural framework that is unique to them and exclusive of others, but not Australians.
“I’ve drunk every brand of Aussie beer you can imagine: VB, XXXX, Carlton Draught, Crown Lager, Coopers and even Fosters. Did this help me? No.
“I’ve got a Weber in my backyard. Does this make me Aussie enough? No.”
I like to eat burritos and take siestas, but that doesn’t make me a mexican Charis.
“I’m a fluent English speaker with an Aussie accent but does this get me in to Club Australia? No.
“I work in Australia, pay my taxes, donate to charities and have eaten my share of smashed avo on toast. My mum started volunteering at a local hospital when she retired. My grandmother was a strict Christian who read the bible every morning and night, and prayed before every meal. It’s still not good enough”
Feel free to start a nation state somewhere else based on English speaking avocado toast eating Christianity, but I have to tell you something, this nation was not founded on those ideals.
Please see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Restriction_Act_1901
Check the anthem please:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Australia_Fair
Australia’s sons let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil,
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in Nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In hist’ry’s page, let ev’ry stage
Advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia fair.
When gallant Cook from Albion sailed,
To trace wide oceans o’er,
True British courage bore him on,
Til he landed on our shore.
Then here he raised Old England’s flag,
The standard of the brave;
“With all her faults we love her still”
“Britannia rules the wave.”
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance Australia fair.
While other nations of the globe
Behold us from afar,
We’ll rise to high renown and shine
Like our glorious southern star;
From England soil and Fatherland,
Scotia and Erin fair,
Let all combine with heart and hand
To advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance Australia fair.
Should foreign foe e’er sight our coast,
Or dare a foot to land,
We’ll rouse to arms like sires of yore,
To guard our native strand;
Britannia then shall surely know,
Though oceans roll between,
Her sons in fair Australia’s land
Still keep their courage green.
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance Australia fair.
Please don’t lecture Australians about the criterion being too exclusive. You know as well as we all do, that what you want is for the word “Australian” to lose all historical meaning. For it to be purely indicative of ownership of a passport with a bird and a marsuipal on it, and maybe that is all it means now, but it meant more previously and maybe it will mean more again in the future.
