Given our shared cultural backgrounds, testing experience in colonial agricultural settlement, and love of a ‘flexi-day’, it’s a wonder Australia hasn’t embraced the celebration of Thanksgiving like our Northern American counterparts.
Pilgrims and Puritans who began emigrating from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of ‘Days of Fasting’ and ‘Days of Thanksgiving’ with them to New England. The tradition took on new potency with the urgent need of the new colony to secure a reliable food supply.
This national holiday is celebrated in Canada and the United States (in October and November respectively) as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest. In the USA, the tradition is commonly traced to a 1621 celebration at present-day Massachusetts. The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest which gave settlers hope for their survival in the new world.
Fast forward 160 years, half a world away, the English colony of New South Wales faced its own existential crisis. After establishing a colony at Farm Cove, at a site now occupied by the Royal Botanic Gardens, it became apparent that few of the First Fleet convicts knew how to farm poor quality soil. The site was generally hot, dry and infertile, and unsuitable for farming on a scale necessary to make the settlement self-sufficient.
There was a very real risk that the settlement would fail through starvation in its first few years, partly due to a failure to learn more from Aboriginals who had no difficulty sourcing nutritious local plants, and knowledge of how to hunt and trap local seafood, kangaroo and other sources of protein.
As settlers spread out from Sydney Cove towards Parramatta and Rose Hill, they found better land for farming. A year long drought in late 1791 held back farming and food continued to remain a major problem until the drought broke. With the rains, and the arrival of the Second Fleet with seed stock, tools, and people with agricultural experience, came a sense of hope for the colony.
It’s curious, given all this, that Australians don’t look to the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens, or the James Ruse Experimental Farm at Rose Hill, as focal points to celebrate our food security on an annual basis. There is much for which we ought to give thanks.
Early farming pioneers like Elizabeth MacArthur, scientists like William Farrer who developed the Federation strain of rust resistant wheat, and thousands of other unsung champions of primary production have made Australia what it is today.
Agriculture and Horticulture are integral to Australia’s economic and social prosperity, and fundamental to our national identity. The food sector consistently accounts for around 20 per cent of domestic manufacturing sales and service income. It has also given us a reputation internationally as a modern, safe, reliable and sustainable producer nation.
We’re fortunate that the overwhelming majority of food sold in Australia is grown and supplied by Australian farmers. We are able to export more than 50 per cent of our agricultural produce, while more than 90 per cent of locally grown meat, milk and eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, sold in Australian grocery stores are domestically produced.
Today, Tourism Australia’s chief marketing ‘pitch’ to inbound tourists centres on our quality food and hospitality experiences. And yet, modern Australia seems to grow ever more detached from farmers.
Once upon a time, almost all Australians had country cousins. Fewer and fewer Australians can claim this. Save for events like The Ekka or the Sydney Royal Easter Show, to bring city and country communities together, we are becoming increasingly detached from rural and regional Australia.
Across the Pacific, millions of Americans will sit down to Thanksgiving meals today and reflect on the trials of their early settlers. As farmers suffer through a protracted drought in this country, with rainfall in the lowest 10% of historical totals, perhaps it’s time we joined in?
- Queensland Opposition Leader, Lawrence Springborg MP.
