Australia Day controversy.

I'm the product of paternal seeds which were sewn by a former Londoner who first set foot on this continent during the last half of the 1850s.  He was a free settler obviously attracted to this country by the then gold rush, because after disembarking in Melbourne he was soon a citizen of Inglewood right among the diggings. I believe that town remains well populated by Masons and off-shoots of that tree even to this day.

The country remained a collection of colonies until the federated nation of Australia came into being on January 0l, 1901. I'm therefore non-plussed by the fact thats many Australians still regard their national day of celebration as January 26th on which date in 1788 the 'great southland' was hi-jacked by the British Empire primarily as a dumping ground for convicted felons they no longer wished to house in the 'old country'!

I'm immensely proud of my country of birth, but not by the way it was first established. Our forebears finally achieved some form of honourable independence as a nation by forming the Commonwealth of Australia as a separate entity from Britain on 01/01/1901... which intentionally or not, seems to be echoed by latter-day national sports fans in their chant 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie OI,OI,OI!