As a school student, Matt Murphy failed English and couldn’t see the point of history. He became a firie and has been serving in Sydney’s inner city for 33 years. He is now also a part-time historian and teacher, who has written four books: Weight of Evidence, about what was the longest civil court case in New South Wales; Rum, about the formative influence of grog on the country; Gold, recounting the story of Edward Hammond Hargraves and the discovery of gold in Australia; and Straya Day, looking at 237 other reasons for a national day off.
Like it or not, 26 January in Australia has become a significant day of both celebration and mourning.
Most countries, if not all, have a national day. Reasons to celebrate a national day include independence from a colonial power, the signing of a treaty, or an act by a monarch, political leader or patron saint. Australia is the only country whose national day celebrates the colonisation of an already occupied territory. Controversially, it continues to do so despite most of its citizens both acknowledging this and the devastating impact upon its original inhabitants.
So what other reasons might we find to mark our national holiday? Well, as it happens, some very significant, funny, tragic, curious and plain old ordinary things have also occurred on that date.
In the spirit of humour, history and humility, here are 237 other events that 26 January could instead be remembered for besides a British Governor raising a British flag on Australian soil.
Matt Murphy’s GOLD is a fresh look at the history of the discovery of gold in Australia.
Ask google Who discovered gold in Australia? and you’ll promptly get ‘Edward Hammond Hargraves’. Hargraves has for decades (and decades) received the fame, fortune and adulation from all corners of the country, but did he earn it?
What about the two diggers he met on the Californian goldfields who told him where to look when he returned to Australia?
What about the guys who led him to where they’d heard gold had been found before?
What about the pioneers whose discoveries had been documented years earlier?
This is the story of an oversized layabout who received years of accolades and free lunches, despite lumbering from one embarrassment to the next, and of those who spent decades trying to expose him and seek their share of the glory.