>now, this is taught in schools, but poorly. though I confess that until I
>was fifteen I always thought that the five minutes silence in November that
>we all had to do was for the sacking of the Whitlam govt (which happened on
>the same day in 1975). I kid you not. all I remember is being told to stand
>and bow my head in school, and next thing I knew I was confronted by angry
>and
>upset adults talking about the coup.
This is an absolutely appropriate conflation -- in fact the things were utterly linkd in my experience, and the Gov Gen's dismissal of the Aus'n PM in the name of he queen was definitely seen around me as another example of the British killed our boys at Gallipoli narrative. Kerr should have been congratulated for that piece of timing. That said ANZAC Day was a huge event in my town, and while it was a celebration of certain 'virtues' as Australian it was never the less not nationalist in the sense of praising Australia as a nation-state. Quite how that worked or whether or not it still works that way is unclear to me. I have a friend doing a large research project on iconic/imaginary celebrations of Australian-ness (from ANzac Day to Mardi Gras) and it's never really occured to me to question the presumption that these are nationalist in that patriotic celebration of a nation sense, though my understanding is that the construction of Anzac Day was meant precisely to fill that function. Australia Day, Anzac Day and Remembrance Day have very little in common with the 4th of July or comparable 'American' celebrations in my experience.
>>Our 'culture industry' has spent a
>>fortune and an age promoting the 'sheep, convicts, alcoholism, lamingtons'
>>aesthetic to our foreign brothers and sisters. I don't know how you're
>>supposed to think anything else! There's not much else, actually. And not
>>that any more either.
>
>'rum, sodomy and the lash' used to be the depiction, but it's not one made
>for tourism -- well, unless it's a very niche tourism.
but i don't think that was an international vision of Australia (perhaps until Mardi Gras), but just a British one. i could be wrong.
Catherine