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The West Australian
VIGILANS ET AUDAX.
One Hundred and Twenty-Second Year of Pubication
PERTH, TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1954.
THE NATIONAL DAY
Today is the 166th anniver-
sary of that supremely signifi-
cant moment in Australian
history: the arrival of Capt.
Phillip and the First Fleet in
the vicinity of what is now
Sydney. The event will be cele-
brated next Monday, only two
days before another significant
moment in the story of the na-
tion, the arrival of a reigning
British Monarch on Austra--
lian soil. Usually coincidence
or fate or the powers-that-be
are not quite so kind as to ar-
range things with such neat-
ness. For this coming together
of the two events helps to give
us as perhaps nothing else
could a unique sense of the
progress that has transformed
Australia out of recognition in
its still brief existence.
The Royal visit helps empha-
sise Australia's status as a na-
tion today; the 1788 anni-
versary celebrations help to
remind us of our humble be-
ginnings in the not far-distant
past. The story of the years
between is one of remarkable
progress. It would fill many
books, and has done; it may
one day even inspire a great
one. Certainly it is sufficient
to inspire pride--that modest
pride that is good for the soul.
It has some of the elements of
the conventional success story:
modest beginnings, a fair
share of early setbacks and
struggle, and, with maturity,
abounding self-confidence, a
touch of brashness perhaps,
and a growing faith in the
future.
At the turn of this century,
the world in general had scant
knowledge of this country.
Sometimes Australia seemed
to be even a source of mild
amusement. The story has
been told somewhere of the
English black sheep who, fac-
ed with the choice of mending
his ways radically or emigrat-
ing to Australia, settled down
to a life of unblemished virtue.
When early Australian cricket
teams played in England,
people were rather astonished
to see that the players were
white and not black. But by
the end of World War II, Aus-
tralia had become something
of a promised land for scores
of thousands from Europe:
Britons looking for a brighter
future than the homeland
seemed to offer, people from
the Continent still thinking
back half fearfully to the years
of the purges and the concen-
tration camp gas-chambers.
Australia wanted these people,
but it had much to offer in re-
turn; security, freedom, a
future.
Inevitably, much of Aus-
tralia's progress has been in
the material sphere, best meas-
ured perhaps by such fig-
ures as those which tell us the
number of refrigerators, the
number of cars, we collect-
ively own. The best in litera-
ture, in music, in art, must be
still to come. For many years
there were other preoccupa-
tions. Now there is room for
many-sided development both
culturally and materially, with
advance in neither sphere
holding back progress in the
other. Australia, of course,
cannot yet see itself out of the
pioneering stage, and nowhere
is that more apparent than in
Western Australia. The years
of this State's greatest expan-
sion have only just begun and
for Australia as a whole the
future is a challenging one. It
is a future in which there ap-
pear to be good prospects that
the uranium and oil will play
a major part, and in which the
agricultural and pastoral in-
dustries may find themselves
hard pressed to feed our grow-
ing population.
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