Wise but also tough words from Sydney author and architecture critic Elizabeth Farrelly who writes regularly for The Sydney Morning Herald. She essentially labels modern Australia as a country unable to listen or heed. She poses the questions for an Australia Day in the middle of an immediate climate crisis as the forested (habited) parts of the country in the south-east are burned to the ground in wild firestorms: “What, at this crossroads, does it mean to be Australian?…..Who are we as a nation, and who do we wish to be going forward?” How pertinent for 20 years after the failed Republic referendum. She even touches on the Republic in her conclusions when she singles out the Union Jack bedecked flag as the symbol of the last 232 years of occupation in the light of European Australians – and those who have come post WWII – stubbornness, even refusal, to change and adapt. The whole article is thought-provoking and well worth a read. Click on link below. Elizabeth Farrelly is a republican. [“Survival-by-respect or death-by-stupid: your choice Straya” by Elizabeth Farrelly, The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 2020]
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
