Australia Day cringe

The best Australia Day celebration I ever experienced involved little more than a large patch of backyard grass, a blistering hot 40 degree day and a giant bag of dry white goon. Collapsed in our own lethargy and unable to move due to the oppressive heat, we steadily drank our way through glass after glass of cheap vino while listening to the slightly more underground musical countdown on local radio station 3D.

As the day meandered by, apparently finding the weather unbearable even for itself, people came and went until there were three: me, my Best Friend Forever and the Swedish Wife. Darkness settled upon us as we giggled like schoolgirls in the backyard, merry and wine flushed.

Later, the BFF and I rode our bikes home through the empty streets of Adelaide. Australia Day being what it is I assume most people were passed out in a drunken fever somewhere in the vicinity of their homes. The more sober among them had possibly hightailed it down to the beach, braving the potentially shark infested waters to skinny dip and exchange thrilling kisses in the shallows. Myself, I collapsed into bed and slipped between the sheets of the still night. The day had marked us well.

This celebration of ours isn't special. It doesn't stand out as being particularly different from anything most others engage in on the “special, special day” of the landing of the First Fleet in 1788. If people celebrate Australia Day, it's usually among friends and/or family. Alcohol is invariably involved, as are gentle pursuits like eating delicious food or embarking on some kind of expedition to a park or beach.

I'm led to believe cricket features highly during this period. Occasionally, people like to do silly things like run through the streets wearing the Australian flag over crisply sunburnt shoulders. I'm aware it varies from group to group, but there seems to be a vague general nod across the board to this strange idea of “what it means to be an Australian”.

If behaviour is anything to go by, being Australian almost overwhelmingly means getting as completely rat arsed as it's possible to get without actually falling over dead from alcohol poisoning. A drink for you, a drink for me and an extra big one for the country!

I'm not sure most people could even articulate why it's so important to drink to the country; what it is about THIS day in particular (other than it marking the landing of the First Fleet) that seems to be require more overblown attempts at quintessential “Aussieness” than others? (And on that note, can I just point out how irritating the expression “Aussie” is? Namely because it's almost always used in conjunction with words like “true blue”, “typical” and “spirit”, like somehow “real” Australians have gained access to a higher spiritual plane than their dowdy western counterparts.)

I'm not the first person to ask what characterises the “typical Australian”. It's been a puzzler for cultural boffins for some time now. To and fro they go on discussing the finer points of definition, always within grasp of a concept yet seemingly unwilling to come up with a definitive answer for fear they a) might have to relinquish the interminably pointless pursuit of trying to figure out who gets to be the poster boy (and it will be a boy - more on that later) for Australiana and b) will probably have to acknowledge that the character they've come up with is completely and utterly embarrassing.

Because, and correct me if I'm wrong, it seems to me that the closest anyone's ever come to defining this supposed “True Blue Aussie Spirit” is as some kind of parochial trickster who likes to think of himself as a doer rather than a thinker and has a striney accent so thick you need a machete to manoeuvre your way through it.

The quintessential Australian has a sense of mischief; he's laidback and enjoys a beer after a hard day's work. He's probably a farmer or a cricketer. He might be a miner. He is not a metrosexual. Or a vegetarian. If he is both of these, he's probably gay, in which case he is definitely NOT True Blue.

So here's where I come to the poster boy part. Much as the anti-feminists might like to spit and yell “misandrist!” at me, it is inescapably true that the discussion of what constitutes true Australianism is drawn almost entirely from masculine energy.

Perhaps the most convincing argument for this lies in this provincial obsession with the word “mateship”, the most ridiculous use of which was uttered following the Beaconsfield miners rescue. According to some reports, the act of the emergency services doing their job was a sparkling example of “true Aussie mateship”. Evidently, this sort of concern for the lives of others is unique to Australia. You know. Because we're all so down to earth and bloody true blue here.

Mateship is a concept that, while not forcefully nor necessarily in practice, is constructed to exclude women. Its history lies overwhelmingly among the Diggers, all those good old Aussie boys from country families that innocently went off to support ye olde Mother Country (ironically, beginning the mythology around the typical Aussie involved pledging ultimate allegiance to the Brits). Sharing cigarettes while in the trenches with a few blue jokes thrown in here and there. Getting up to mischief, whistling at the nurses, losing their virginity to Ladies of the Night before they had the chance to lose their lives. Above all, standing alongside your friends and supporting them in the face of all the odds. That's what this country was founded on. I know, because John Howard told me. Endlessly.

Yes, mateship belongs entirely to the boys. But considering it's so central to this idea of the typical Australian (along with larrikinism, yet another realm almost exclusively spoken about as being occupied by men), where does this leave women within the construction of Australian identity? Equally as pertinent, where does this leave men who are disinclined towards pranks and buffoonery, country manners and manly pursuits? Where does it leave migrants and new Australians? And just where in the hell does it leave the Indigenous folk of this country?

The fact is, there is no “typical Aussie”. Holding on to this ridiculous mythology of the Aussie larrikin as being the definition of Australian spirit IS cause for a cultural cringe. It's isolationist, embarrassing and determinedly disinterested in complexities or diversity. It's designed to excuse a wide range of ignorant and offensive behaviour, because it allows the perpetrators to hide behind the accusation that those offended “just can't take a joke” - and we all know there's nothing LESS Australian than having a giant rod up your bum because you're incapable of seeing humour in the marginalisation and dissemination of others.

Think about the reaction to criticism of Sam Kekovich's 2008 Australia Day lamb ad. Trotting out a lame joke about New Zealand PM Helen Clark's femininity for cheap laughs, online forums lit up with alternate outraged complaints and defiant support. Being a lunatic feminist, I naturally fell firmly on the side of “WTF?”

But why was I getting my knickers in a knot? After all, it was meant as a "jovial swipe".

“It’s the rivalry between Australia and New Zealand and it’s a bit of fun,” Mr Moore [Former New Zealand prime minister and director-general of the World Trade Organisation] said.

Yeah, because who doesn't find it fun to denigrate the political achievements of a smart and talented woman by suggesting somehow she's lacking in the more fundamental aspects of womanhood?

Oh right. “Typical Aussies”.

I don't know what the rest of you are doing this Saturday, but I'm going to be doing what's typical behaviour for ME on Australia Day. Backyard. Best Friend. Goon. And not a cricket bat in sight.