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Wattle Day: Could a new, golden Australia Day bloom in the springtime?

Tony Wright

The coming of spring in Australia is golden. 

It is an old, old love story. The flowering of the wattle.

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The wattle has been the annual herald of new life to Australians from the first Indigenous people, who used the tree for all manner of purposes over tens of thousands of years, to those who have adopted the green and gold – the foliage and the bloom – as today's national colours.

The sight of wattle lighting up the land in springtime moved the author D.H. Lawrence, visiting Australia in 1922, to rhapsody.

It was, he wrote in his book Kangaroo, "as if angels had flown right down out of the softest gold regions of heaven to settle here, in the Australian bush".

And now, as Australia celebrates Wattle Day, the fluffy golden flowers are being floated as a settling of the growing national argument about the appropriateness of celebrating Australia Day on January 26. 

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Many Indigenous people have long decried January 26 as "invasion day" because it marks the arrival of the First Fleet in Port Jackson in 1788. Local councils, including two in Melbourne, are now facing off with the federal government by ditching citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.

But the president of the Wattle Day Association, Terry Fewtrell, believes the solution has been obvious all along. 

The nation could embrace Wattle Day – September 1 – as a complementary national day for those who have a problem with January 26, he proposes. 

"Australia has several national symbols but perhaps there is one that unites us all. That symbol is our national floral emblem, the golden wattle," Mr Fewtell said.

"It has been the great witness to the whole of the Australian story. 

"It has been in our land for more than 30 million years and has welcomed us all – Aboriginal, colonials, postwar and 21st-century migrants. It has no historical baggage. It is our colours – the green and gold."

Mr Fewtrell has won a potential ally in the Indigenous author, journalist and commentator Stan Grant.

Grant said he'd stayed away from commenting on the suitability of January 26, because whether or not it was to be celebrated as Australia Day, it would still be marked out for historical significance, inviting reflection. 

However, even his mother had said – on Australia Day last year, when Mr Grant's father had received an Australia Day award – that "it would be good if they changed the day, wouldn't it".

"If someone could find a day that everyone could gather around – like this idea of Wattle Day or something like it – then I think it would be a good thing," Mr Grant said.

"The Australian genius is the willingness to compromise, and this seems a fine example of that."

The wattle was declared to be Australia's floral symbol in 1988 – the bicentennial year – and celebration of Wattle Day on September 1 was officially proclaimed in every state and territory in 1992. 

The love affair extends vastly longer than that, however. 

Indigenous people used wattle for its gum to bind axe heads, its bark to tan skins, its leaves as a remedy for ailments, and boomerangs were fashioned from the curved wood of the tree. 

Newer Australians have been wearing sprigs of wattle to symbolise their belonging since the early 19th century.

Soldiers overseas in World War I were sent sprigs of wattle to remind them of home. Generations of Australian school children planted wattle trees in school grounds, and the Order of Australia's design is based upon a single ball of wattle flowers.

There are more than 900 species of wattle – all the acacias – and one or the other is always blooming somewhere, whatever the season. 

About a third of the species flower in winter. The golden outbursts cascade from north to south, and from the coast to the inland, as spring approaches. In the lead-up to September, the golden wattle (Acacia pycnantha), bursts into bloom across large areas of Victoria and NSW.

Could it light the way to a new Australia Day, this ancient love affair? 

For now, at least, happy Wattle Day.

Originally published on smh.com.au as 'Wattle Day: Could a new, golden Australia Day bloom in the springtime?'.

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