(ed - I've been tardy posting this. My bad)

We had cakes in work last Wednesday because it was Australia Day- well, we’re an Australian-owned business and clearly there was some money floating around for motivational purposes and to stop us from thinking of ourselves as working for one of the previous names of the business before the Aussies bought it. I had a vanilla slice, about a quarter of the size of the one I had last year in St.Kilda, the trendy eating-out suburb of Melbourne, but a vanilla slice nevertheless. Before leaving the house, I made sure that I wore a shirt which went with my Fremantle Dockers tie. Because whereas until last year, Australia Day was a date in the diary or on a calendar, last year I spent five weeks there on holiday- an amazing time in a fascinating country, but now I have something to hang it on to.

For a variety of reasons, we’re more likely now to come into contact with Australians and Australian things than ever- you can fly to Australia and have a fortnight’s holiday for about £1000 if you’re so inclined, and the tourist traffic flows both ways, so that even in this country we’re more likely to meet, know or work with Australians. In the last fifteen years or so, Australian musical and acting talent has managed to integrate itself almost seamlessly into the international scene, so that a "Hollywood" blockbuster like Van Helsing can have a predominantly Australian cast, with many of their compatriots filling minor speaking roles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Partly because of the limited market in their homeland, most Australian actors of any calibre can play British or American characters with some success, not least the likes of Anthony LaPaglia in Without a Trace (and Frasier, for that matter) and Julian MacMahon in Charmed and Nip/Tuck. Australia is trying very hard to become a world nation where citizens of different ancestries can live harmoniously alongside each other- but there’s still a very long way to go before genuine reconciliation with the indigenous people is reached.

One of the many slogans which came out of Australia around the time of the Millennium and the Sydney Olympics was the national motto, "It’s what we make it". Because Australia has the luxury of being a nation under construction. Her only real traditions are those of the last 200 years of European settlement, and there’s a real sense of the country as a special land, with considerable mineral resources and an enterprising and competitive people prepared to make a name for themselves. You have only to see how seriously the Australians take their sport- it’s the one arena where a young, brash nation can really make its mark. And that spreads into other areas, so it’s nothing for a young Australian to tour the world and see the capitals of Europe before returning home to settle into one of the most eclectic nations on Earth. Within the space of a few Melbourne streets, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Vietnamese and Indonesian cultures live alongside each other, giving the city a wonderful restaurant culture and ensuring a continuing supply of young women with striking Mediterranean looks.

There are, however, shadows in the Australian dream. Two centuries of persecution and ill-treatment of the Aboriginal people are not easily healed in a couple of decades, and there are no easy solutions. A "Western" nation like Australia cannot allow the indigenous people to live their traditional nomadic lifestyle, but as an alternative can only throw money at the "Aboriginal problem", which simply leads to more and more Aboriginal people living in uncared-for Government-supplied housing and more drug and alcohol abuse. True, there is an increasing desire to understand and explain the Aboriginal culture, but there is also an equal amount of mistrust which can only be overcome by the passing of time. The Australian General Election of 2004 also returned the Liberal coalition under John Howard for a third term, a sign that the nation is well and truly turning back from the radical, Asia-focused agenda of the Keating Labor government of the 1990s towards a more conservative, American-oriented position. The Howard government has consistently taken a hard line on refugees, most controversially holding child refugees in internment camps on the same basis as adults, and Howard has stated his opposition to gay marriage and his determination to define marriage in law as an exclusively male-female institution. In short, the nation has returned to its position as America’s deputy in the region- a source of ongoing tension with the neighbours, particularly New Zealanders who see themselves as coming from the same background but living as part of the Pacific region rather than in temporary charge of it.