http://www.australiaday.com.au
2002 Australia Day Address: Dr Tim Flannery
http://www.australiaday.com.au/whatson/australiadayaddress2.aspx?AddressID=12
Every year on January 26th, Australia celebrates its official national day, the day when the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788 to proclaim British sovereignty over this ‘new’ continent. Celebrations are held all over the country, with the most extensive program of events clustering around Sydney, New South Wales.
The website australiaday.com.au is consequently run by the Australia Day Council of New South Wales, and it offers a lot of information on Australian national identity, from student resources to a record of the Australia Day Addresses or comments about national identity both from intellectuals or writers and everyday users of the website.
By searching through the website and looking at the annual Australia Day Addresses and the Australian of the Year Awards, we can learn a lot about the Australian national identity and its slow and subtle changes over time.
A very interesting Address was delivered at Australia Day in 2002 by Dr Tim Flannery, who was later named Australian of the Year in 2007. He talked about the need for a new Australian identity, and how the typically Australian myths and nation-building historical events (Ned Kelly, ANZAC Day, The Man from Snowy River) reflect more the European desires and roots than a distinctly Australian identity.
For a research paper that focuses on how those myths have shaped the Australian national identity through media representations in the past, Flannery’s speech might be a good starting point to think about the more or less ongoing influence of those representations in the present.
