The anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip at Port Jackson in New South Wales on January 26th, 1788.
Here’s the official site, and more information at Wikipedia.
It is going to be a very soggy celebration in New South Wales and Queensland – another heavy rain and flooding pattern has set in.
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And every year this day is celebrated with rally at a tent embassy in front of (now Old) Parliament House by the Aborigines, who note that their land got taken from them without even a handful of beads in payment and set up their embassy just in case the Government wants to remedy that situation and engage in negotiations to legalize their presence upon Aboriginal soil. Thus far, after forty years of this campaign, the Government has failed to engage in said negotiations. Go figure :twisted:.
But this year was especially spicy, because the Opposition leader Tony Abbott decided to make a racist comment and subsequently he and PM Julia Gillard were set upon by hundreds of rioting protesters at a joint event, and much hilarity ensued, including the dragging/carrying of Julia by her security as they scurried her to safety. Ah, the horror!
– Badtux the Easily Amused Penguin
Yeah, I’m going to post on that incident later. The crowd was after Abbott, but Gillard was in the same building pinning medals on first responders for service to the country last year, and the police hauled her along with him out of the building.
Alas the PM wasn’t wearing sneakers, and those heels weren’t made for running, so she actually lost one and stumbled. Most of the published photos have been cropped so you don’t see Abbott who was being hustled out just behind and to the right [naturally] of Ms Gillard.
Abbott is rather talented at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, it is a gift that keeps on giving, and if Gillard didn’t have bad luck, she wouldn’t have any luck at all.