![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Girt By Sea
Jan. 26th, 2010 02:42 pmSo, it’s Australia Day again, and that means it’s time for the annual national debate on “Just how crap is our national flag and anthem?”
The flag, of course, has the problem of looking like a colonial ensign and being easily confused with that of New Zealand or a number of British overseas territories. The dominant element is the Union Jack, which is itself an amalgamation of multiple flags, so the symbolism ends up being several steps removed from Australia. All round, it’s not a very good flag.
Of course, it looks brilliant compared to our national anthem, which features bizarre word choices, barely coherent sentences, and a curiously recursive ending as the anthem encourages us to “let us sing Advance Australia Fair”. Now, obviously, Australia was never going to have a very good national anthem – our history doesn’t lend itself to the sort of calls for national liberation, unity or revolution that make for a good national anthem. Still, Advance Australia Fair is really scraping the bottom of the barrel – and it’s truly odd that of all countries, Australia is one of the few whose anthem did *not* start life as a drinking song… not that that would necessarily improve it, but it might at least have ensured people would stop trying to sing it in faux-operatic tones.
The flag, of course, has the problem of looking like a colonial ensign and being easily confused with that of New Zealand or a number of British overseas territories. The dominant element is the Union Jack, which is itself an amalgamation of multiple flags, so the symbolism ends up being several steps removed from Australia. All round, it’s not a very good flag.
Of course, it looks brilliant compared to our national anthem, which features bizarre word choices, barely coherent sentences, and a curiously recursive ending as the anthem encourages us to “let us sing Advance Australia Fair”. Now, obviously, Australia was never going to have a very good national anthem – our history doesn’t lend itself to the sort of calls for national liberation, unity or revolution that make for a good national anthem. Still, Advance Australia Fair is really scraping the bottom of the barrel – and it’s truly odd that of all countries, Australia is one of the few whose anthem did *not* start life as a drinking song… not that that would necessarily improve it, but it might at least have ensured people would stop trying to sing it in faux-operatic tones.