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Australia is one of the most urbanised and coast-dwelling populations in the world. More than 80 per cent of Australians live within 100 kilometres of the coast.
A worldwide competition to design the Australian flag attracted 32,823 entries in 1901. There were 5 winners who shared the 200 pound prize money.
Since 1901 there have been ten public competitions for a new national flag and they have drawn over 60,000 entries.
One Australian child is born every 2 minutes.
People who celebrate their birthday on the 26 January are eligible to join 26ers’ Club.
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Download a PDF of Australia Day History here
Download a Word version of the Australia Day History here
Australia Day celebrates the anniversary of Captain Arthur Phillip
unfurling the British flag at Sydney Cove and proclaiming British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia on 26 January 1788.
The quest for the celebration of a united Australian national day commenced within a few years of the First Fleet landing and the subsequent white settlement of this island continent.
The following timeline gives a chronological history of how Australians have acknowledged, celebrated and mourned January 26 since 1788. It traces the path that leads to all States and Territories celebrating Australia Day as one on January 26 annually.
January 26, through more than 200 years of debate and controversy, has remained the Australian celebratory national day since that date in January 1788 when 'formal possession was taken of the Colony of New South Wales. On that day, Captain Arthur Phillip became Governor of the Colony, having jurisdiction over the area bounded by latitude 10 37' to latitude 43 49' south and inland to longitude 135 east'.
The fledgling colony soon began to mark the anniversary of 26 January 1788 with formal dinners and informal celebrations. Manning Clark noted that on January 26, 1808, the 'anniversary of the foundation of the colony' was observed in the traditional manner with 'drinking and merriment'. John Macarthur Senior had ensured his soldiers were amply supplied with liquor, bonfires were blazing and private houses illuminated.
By 1820, Australia was beginning to look undeniably prosperous and sentiments of Australian patriotism were being expressed at gatherings of ex-convicts. The sense of belonging to a new nation was encouraged in 1817 when Governor Macquarie recommended the adoption of the name Australia, instead of New Holland, for the entire continent.
An article in the Sydney Gazette on February 1, 1817 records a typical anniversary dinner for First Landing Day or Foundation Day held in the house of Isaac Nichols, a respected emancipist and Australia's first Postmaster. Similar dinners are described involving William Charles Wentworth and friends on 26 January 1825 and 1828, when the catchcry and traditional toast had already become 'to the land, boys, we live in'. Many ex-convicts owned and ran the wealthiest and most successful businesses in the colony.
The first official celebrations were held in 1818, marking the 30th anniversary of white settlement. Governor Macquarie ordered a salute of 30 guns to be fired from the battery at Dawes Point and in the evening gave a dinner at Government House for civil and military officers. A ball followed, hosted by Mrs Macquarie.
Throughout the early 19th century, the day became one for sporting events, with horse races popular from the 1820s and regattas from the 1830s.
The growing sense of patriotism was being expressed in other ways. Young Charles Tompson, reputed to be our first Australian-born poet and the son of a transportee, was moved to compose eight stanzas of tribute to his native country for 26 January 1824 titled 'Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel'.
Edward Smith Hall, proprietor and publisher of The Monitor, had people such as Charles Tompson in mind when he wrote, in 1821, 'the circumstances of the parents of the most of them having come to the country in bondage, so far from making them humble, causes them to be the proudest people in the world...the circumstance of being free is felt by them with a strength bordering on fierce enthusiasm.'
In 1826 at the centre of the anniversary dinner, 'Australia' a new word for the continent, entered the list of toasts. The term, recommended in his Voyage to Terra Australis in 1814 by Matthew Flinders, the skilful circumnavigator of the continent in 1801-03, and proposed by Macquarie to a reluctant British government in 1817, was taken up in Australia, especially by emancipists. The most famous of them, William Charles Wentworth with a fellow barrister had established the colony's first uncensored newspaper, the Australian, in 1824.
List of toasts and accompanying airs, United Australians' Dinner, 26 January 1837, Sydney. Source: Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 28 January 1837, National Library of Australia
Fifty years after Phillip landed, in 1838, a number of celebratory events were organised and the first public holiday ever marked in Australia was announced for the 26 January in that year.
Advertisement for illuminating Sydney town on the evening of Anniversary Day, 1838. Source: Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 25 January 1838, National Library of Australia
In distinct contrast to the mainly private and somewhat elitist anniversary dinners in previous years, January 26, 1838 became a day for everyone, except for Australia’s Aborigines. The British and their sheep had expanded at the expense of the Aborigines, who, in resisting the invaders, were becoming a minority in their own country. The fate of Aboriginal resistance leaders, such as Pemulwoy in the Sydney district at the turn of the nineteenth century and Yagan in the Swan River district in the early 1830s, foreshadowed the wider fate of their peoples. In Van Diemen's Land the attempt to end the conflict with settlers in Van Diemen's Land, by removing and 'civilising' Aborigines in exile on Flinders Island in Bass Strait, had failed by 1838. The government's model village had become 'a death camp'.
By 1888, Australia's population numbered almost three million and many changes had taken place over the previous 50 years. Gold had been discovered in the 1850s, in places such as Bendigo and Ballarat, bringing great wealth, immigration from all over the world and increased agitation for democratic reforms (taxation and representation). In the 1850s Victoria’s population trebled in size due to the Gold Rush, outstripping New South Wales and Sydney until the early 1890s. Its population also strongly diversified (there were 26 different nationalities identified at the Eureka Stockade in 1854).
Representatives of the Australian sister colonies, now five in number, went to Sydney to celebrate with New South Wales in 1888. New Zealanders were also there. Victoria had separated from New South Wales in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. In 1863, control of the Northern Territory passed from New South Wales to South Australia. Only Western Australia was not self-governing by 1888, having a smaller population and developing more slowly, even after taking convicts between 1850 and 1868. Transportation to New South Wales had effectively ended in 1840. Van Diemen's Land, with self-government by 1856, had gained a new name, Tasmania, having ended transportation a few years before.
Media comment was mixed. South Australia's Advertiser took pains to point out that New South Wales, though 'senior', was not 'the parent colony' of all the others, which had their own 'local memories and historic dates'. The Brisbane Courier was more direct: Australia as 'the cesspit of England' had been infected with 'the cancer of convictism'. Its editor acknowledged that Australia had 'witnessed much that had best be forgotten, much that cannot be contemplated without shame, but also much of which the Anglo-Saxon race may well be signally proud'. For Tasmania's Mercury the central fact was 'the centenary of the occupation of the country by the British people'. The editor expected all Australians to celebrate the centenary whether they were 'natives or merely dwellers in an adopted land'.
'Natives' was the term now widely adopted to describe the native-born of European descent — their strongest advocate being the Australian Natives' Association (ANA), founded in 1871 in Victoria to provide medical, sickness and funeral benefits. By the 1880s it had also become a powerful voice for the federation of the Australian colonies and the celebration of a national day. By 1888 more than 60 per cent of the continent's population was native-born, a contrast to some 20 per cent in 1838.
The first centenary of white settlement was celebrated with great enthusiasm. With the exception of Adelaide, all colonial capitals declared Anniversary Day 1888 a public holiday and celebrations took place throughout the colonies. Ceremonies, parades, exhibitions, fireworks, banquets, and church services were popular. In Melbourne there was a Centennial International Exhibition that remained open from August 1888 to February 1889, attracting nearly two million visitors.
The centenary was also marked by numerous historical publications and commemorative volumes as well as souvenirs and other centenary ephemera. Australians were beginning to talk widely about other political questions of the day, including the move towards Federation.
The Australia Day Committee (Victoria) gratefully acknowledges the support of the Australia Day Council of New South Wales and the National Australia Day Council in compiling this history.
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