ABSTRACT
Literally a ‘celebration of the nation’,1 the Australian Bicentenary of 1988 commemorated the arrival of the First Fleet, commanded by Arthur Phillip, at Botany Bay, New South Wales in 1788. The fleet had comprised 160,000 men, women and children, including both gaolers and convicts, and the British government had charged Phillip with the responsibility of establishing a penal colony there. In tandem with the official celebrations and the arrival of a replica First Fleet from Britain, a large-scale protest – in which 50,000 Indigenous Australians and their supporters walked on a ‘March for Freedom, Hope and Justice’ – publicly highlighted the fact that this originary moment was predicated on invasion and dispossession of the peoples who had previously occupied the land. As a result, the Bicentenary acted as the catalyst for a vigorous constitutional and national debate, which continued throughout Australia in the 1990s, concerning ‘what the nation is’ and when it might be said to begin.
