Happy 173rd

While to the rest of the inhabited earth to-day is if anything the feast of the Holy Innocents (Childermas), to-day, the 28th of December, is Proclamation Day to the good people of South Australia (to which day the holiday is transferred this year; normally they get the actual holiday on Boxing Day), the anniversary of the establishment of their State as a British colony back in 1836, shortly after the arrival of the first free settlers; the Letters Patent of King William IV granting the power, the proclamation was read, which reading has been repeated at the official ceremony marking this event ever since:

By His Excellency John Hindmarsh, Knight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order, Governor and Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Province of South Australia:

In announcing to the colonists of His Majesty’s Province of South Australia, the establishment of the Government, I hereby call upon them to conduct themselves on all occasions with order and quietness, duly to respect the laws, and by a course of industry and sobriety, by the practice of sound morality and a strict observance of the Ordinances of Religion, to prove themselves worthy to be the Founders of a great free colony.

It is also, at this time especially, my duty to apprize the Colonists of my resolution, to take every lawful means for extending the same protection to the Native Population as to the rest of His Majesty’s subjects and of my firm determination to punish with exemplary severity all acts of violence or injustice which may in any manner be practiced or attempted against the Natives who are to be considered as much under the safeguard of the Law as the Colonists themselves, and equally entitled to the privileges of British subjects. I trust therefore, with confidence to the exercise of moderation and forbearance by all Classes in their intercourse with the Native Inhabitants, and that they will omit no opportunity of assisting me to fulfil His Majesty’s most gracious and benevolent intentions toward them by promoting their advancement in civilization and ultimately, under the blessing of Divine Providence, their conversion to the Christian Faith.

By His Excellency’s Command,

Robert Gouger

Colonial Secretary

God Save the King!

Proclamation Day

Adelaide: the city of churches, a beaut spot, and one friends of mine hail from.  Well, to salute them and their compatriots, I recall that today is Proclamation Day – on the 28th of December 1836, Governor Hindmarsh at the Old Gum Tree, Glenelg (see image above), read the proclamation of the British Province of South Australia.  It was to be a model colony, for free settlers only, unlike the other Australian colonies...  

Some think they can distinguish a South Australian accent, but in reality all there is to it is a small collection of local words and a minute difference in pronouncing one vowel before "l".  To a non-Australian, the difference would be negligible.  South Australia was meant to be different, too, in that it was to have been a home away from Home for Dissenters, even above Anglicans; but happily the Irish and other Roman Catholics found their way in anyway.

If England had come back to the Faith, say, if Philip and Mary had had a child, or if the Armada had succeeded, then the patron saints of South Australia would have been the Holy Innocents, and Childermas accounted there, not a day of bad, but of good omen.