There were angry murmurings by some people at the back of the marquee set up for Campbelltown’s Australia Day ceremony last Friday in Koshigaya Park.
Some of those present were clearly not happy with parts of the “welcome to country’’ speech, especially when the controversial phrase “invasion day’’ was uttered.
Most people politely sat quietly during the speech but several let their feelings show.
Including an official guest, who told the Voice in Macarthur afterwards: “I have no problem with most of what the Indigenous people say but I have a real problem when they start talking about invasion day.’’
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♦ Another mob that may have reason to be unhappy with the ceremony would be monarchists.
We noticed that the picture of Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, was almost out of sight for most people.
It was placed just above the ground and just behind the microphone and the speaker’s lectern, and looked more like a bit of forgotten clutter in the shed than a picture of our head of state at an official Australia Day ceremony.
No doubt even fair minded republicans would have felt a bit sorry for our almost grounded Queen’s location.
To be fair, the picture of the Queen was a lot more prominent on the stage inside Greg Percival community centre where council held a second Australia Day citizenship ceremony later in the day.
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♦ Superintendent Wayne Benson, the commander of the Campbelltown Local Area Command, was among 10 members of the NSW Police Force who received an Australian Police Medal for outstanding service as part of the 2018 Australia Day honours.
Supt Benson, who joined the NSW Police Force as a trainee in 1987, was appointed Commander of Campbelltown LAC in 2013.
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♦ A local police officer will appear in court next month after being charged in relation to alleged historical domestic violence related offences.
The male senior constable, who is attached to the South West Metropolitan Region, was served a future court attendance notice on January 23, for the offences of malicious damage and intimidation.
He will appear in Campbelltown Local Court on February 27.
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♦ A local property owner with a rabbit problem had a ferret man out on the weekend.
Unable to find any accessible rabbit holes, he took the Rossmore man and his ferrets to his neighbour’s property.
But despite a couple of attempts no rabbits were ferreted out by the female ferrets.
The neighbour did have one question for the ferret man: if you do catch rabbits, what do you do with them?
“Why, we eat them for dinner of course.’’
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♦ Greg Warren’s 2018 annual letter to the NSW premier is almost identical to the one he penned 12 months ago, but that’s not our MP’s fault.
He urges Gladys Berejiklian to give us more train services and better roads, especially the Raby Road-Hume Highway connection, fund Campbelltown Hospital to reduce waiting times and fix the maintenance backlog in local schools.
He may see some results on the schools issue: spotted over the holidays was work on a least one local primary school, installing air conditioning and solar panels.
Of course, even the government will be aware that its term in office is coming to an end in a tad over 12 months.
All governments start being nice to the people when an election is not too far away and wants us to vote for them.
The election is due on the last Saturday of March next year.
When I went to high school, the mandatory picture of the sovereign took pride of place above a toilet door, down a narrow, out of bounds corridor.
It only takes a small amount of empathy to understand why the term ‘invasion day’ is used. Perhaps the unnamed official guest could take the time to listen with an open heart.