[Editor: This letter, about Wattle Day and the Wattle Day League, from Ellenor Symon and Muriel E. Farr (officers of the Wattle Day League in South Australia), was published in The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), 30 August 1910.]
Wattle Day League.
To the Editor.
Sir — The idea of embodying Australian national sentiment in a native flower, and of setting apart one day in the year for its celebration has met with the greatest success in Sydney, and a branch of the league has been formed in South Australia. His Excellency the Governor and Lady Bosanquet have expressed sympathy with the movement, and have granted to it their patronage. The subscription is the small one of 1/, but the committee will be grateful for any contribution over that sum. The subscription for life members is £1 1/.
It has been decided to observe September 1 (Thursday next) as Wattle Day throughout Australia. On that day the Australian national flower — the wattle blossom — might be worn and its display encouraged. Wattles might also be planted in various localities, at the proper season. We hope all Australians will assist, as far as possible, in carrying out this scheme and in making it widespread.
That there is a strong and increasing Australian sentiment no competent observer will deny. Underneath all questions of policy, caste, and creed is this emerging national consciousness; and all who love this young nation, and are concerned in her destiny, will not regard as trivial an attempt to materialise Australian patriotism in an Australian flower. That the wattle of all our flora is the most suitable can be easily proved. Found in every State of the Commonwealth, from Port Darwin to Tasmania, from Sydney to Fremantle, it has that universality without which no emblem, however beautiful, could expect general acceptance; and it is especially and typically Australian. There are a few species of acacias found elsewhere — in America and South Africa — but there is no country in the world whose vegetation is so characterised by wattle as Australia.
Of its beauty it is hardly necessary to speak. We have some hundreds of different kinds of acacias, among which are those especially familiar ones — golden wattle, silver wattle, black, feathery, weeping, &c. All display some shade of yellow, generally a clear golden hue, like solidified sunshine. All exhale a scent, delicate and haunting, or heavy and honeyed, according to species. All are generous flowerers, and put forth in prodigal profusion their golden globes, little fluffy balls, long fingers of yellow down, or tiny feathery tufts, as the case may be.
To the native-born Australian the wattle stands for home, country, kindred, sunshine, and love — every instinct that the heart most deeply enshrines. Get the Australian, wandering in foreign lands, who perhaps believes himself to be the very embodiment of unimaginative prose, to tell you how the sudden sight of a spray of wattle will “flood his heart abrim” with that complex, yet primitive, emotion we call patriotism. Here is the sentiment, authentic, virile. Here is the flower, beautiful, suitable. Link them together, and you have a combination of which future historians will have much to say.
Let the wattle henceforth be a sacred charge to every Australian. Let us foster and protect and cherish it, aye, let us even worship it, if our bump of veneration is sufficiently developed. Let us plant it in all our parks, and reserves, and pleasure grounds, so that we may make pilgrimages to its groves in blossom time. Let us give our school children wattle plants, and offer annual prizes for the best-grown trees, that there may be no Australian who cannot link it with his childish memories. Let us rouse our young people’s sense of chivalry, and make the wattle synonymous with Australia’s honor. Then any vandal who mutilates or destroys it will meet with the execration he deserves.
If this scheme is carried out on the proposed lines, the cultivation of wattle will be so stimulated that on Wattle Day it will be available for all. Wealthy patriots will pick from their wattle plantations gifts for hospitals and public institutions. District nurses and other ministers of grace will leave sprigs of it with the patients as they go their rounds. Depots for its free distribution will be established, for that one day, in the slums and alleys of the cities. Strangers in the street will give and accept the national emblem from each other as freely as they accept the summer sunshine, and through all the length and breadth of the land there will be no heart too poor to do it reverence.
— We are, &c.
ELLENOR SYMON, President.
MURIEL E. FARR, Secretary.
Source:
The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), 30 August 1910, p. 8
Also published in:
The Register (Adelaide, SA), 30 August 1910, p. 8
The Daily Herald (Adelaide, SA), 31 August 1910, p. 8
Editor’s notes:
&c. = an alternative form of “etc.”; an abbreviation of “et cetera” (also spelt “etcetera”), a Latin term (“et” meaning “and”, “cetera” meaning “the rest”) which is translated as “and the rest (of such things)”, used in English to mean “and other similar things”, “other unspecified things of the same class” or “and so forth”
1/ = one shilling: a coin equivalent to twelve pence (a shilling was colloquially known as a “bob”); a shilling was a unit of British-style currency used in Australia, until the decimalisation of the currency in 1966 (the decimal monetary equivalent of a shilling was ten cents)
aye = yes (may also be used to express agreement, assent, or the acceptance of an order)
bump = (in the context of phrenology) a bump, excrescence, protuberance, or protrusion on a human head, which theoretically would give an indication as to someone’s character traits and mental abilities
Commonwealth = the Commonwealth of Australia; the Australian nation, federated on 1 January 1901
Day Bosanquet = Sir Day Hort Bosanquet (1843-1923), admiral in the Royal Navy (UK) and Governor of South Australia (1909-1914); he was born in Alnwick (Northumberland, England) in 1843, and died in Newbury (Berkshire, England) in 1923
See: 1) P. A. Howell, “Bosanquet, Sir Day Hort (1843–1923)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography
2) “Day Bosanquet”, Wikipedia
execration = the act of execrating (i.e. the act of cursing or denouncing), being an action motivated by strong feelings of dislike, disgust, or hatred, aimed towards someone or something which is regarded as an abomination, detestable, or loathsome
flood his heart abrim = a quote derived from a poem by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), “The Flowers” (1895), which includes the lines “Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim”
See: Rudyard Kipling, “The Flowers: 1895”, Bartleby
Lady Bosanquet = Mary Bosanquet (née Butt), wife of Day Bosanquet [see: Day Bosanquet]
[Editor: Changed “ELLENOR SYMON President” to “ELLENOR SYMON, President” (added a comma).]
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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