Somewhere a little past midsummer is a good time for national holidays, right? And there’s often a good historical date cooperating to line up with good weather.
Niall on the M/V Furthur, waving a flag to celebrate Australia Day in Sydney Harbour, 2011
For Australia, that’s the 26th of January, and the commemorative event is the 1788 arrival of a British boat in what is now Sydney Harbour.
The boat was part of what’s now called The First Fleet. Basically, these were boats of convicts and a supporting crew of handlers in search of a place to call home in the big new land down under. The loss of the colonies in the United States had prompted Britain to find other places for the removal of their unwanted, and this was the first mass dispatch for relocation.
Cook had been here back in 1700 and this boat we’re honoring had actually gotten to Australian shores a couple of weeks previously. After poking around a number of bays in the area of what is now New South Wales,…