Australia Day holds special significance for a lot of people, few more so locally than Noosa Parks Association secretary and CCIQ Noosa board member Ingrid Jackson, as she explains.
AUSTRALIA Day has a special meaning for me, and as I attend Noosa Council’s largest citizenship ceremony of the year at Noosaville Lions Park on Tuesday 26 January, I’ll have an extra spring in my step.
My parents, Libby and Henry, migrated from what is now the Czech Republic to Australia in 1948, my father lecturing in mathematics at the University of Tasmania.
I was born in Hobart in 1952 and a couple of years later in June 1954 my parents were naturalised at a ceremony in the Hobart Town Hall.
In the photo, which featured on the front page of the Hobart Mercury, you can see the local civic authority dressed in a most un-Noosalike way, towering over the three of us.
Hobart was a turning point for my parents.
During World War II, Henry, who was half Jewish, had been interned in a labour camp. After the war, as Czechoslovakia steadily fell under Communist control, my parents, not yet together, migrated separately to Hobart where they eventually met and married.
They never returned to the Czech Republic. They never wanted to. There were too many bad memories.
Eventually, Henry and Libby moved from Hobart to Edmonton in Canada, where my late father became Professor of Mathematics at the University of Alberta.
I was educated in Canada, completing my first degree there, and then, under very different circumstances from those which had motivated my parents to migrate, I made my way back to Australia.
In the Sydney suburb of Mosman, 30 years after my parents had been naturalised, I became an Australian citizen again at a ceremony in the Mosman Town Hall. That’s me in the middle of the photo. The civic authority was still wearing a wig.
And so next Tuesday, with my mother Libby who now also lives in Noosa, I will be at Lions Park to see some 85 new citizens from 16 different countries become Australians.
When the ceremony starts at 9.30am it will be an emotional moment. It always is.
I’m not aware of there being any people from the Czech Republic, or Canada, but there will be new citizens from China, Cyprus, Italy, Japan, Nepal, Senegal, Singapore and the United States.
Noosa MP Glen Elmes will address the gathering and then Noosa deputy mayor Bob Abbot will conduct the citizenship formalities.
As for me and my mum, we’ll be feeling appreciative that we’re here to observe it all in a great town in a great country.
About 6.6 million Australians, 28 percent of our population, were born overseas. We’ll be thinking of them and what they’ve done and we’ll also be thinking of the first Australians and what they’ve had to endure.
Yes, Australia Day is a very special day.
