On Monday night mum had a council meeting and I took the kids out all afternoon and one of the locations we visited was St Kilda beach which is a popular beach in Melbourne. It's real hustle and bustle of a place. Although it appears a lot of people are still fearful of the pandemic and the place was pretty quite.
A major city beach that you're often struggling to find a spot to sit was virtually empty, awesome news for us as we enjoyed the warm summer night and swam a bit.
But what really caught my attention was how much little miss learns from the world around her. The image above is of Captain Cook, Australia has a thing for him more so the British Royali Loyalists. As it was recently Australia day the day often starts off with someone painting the statue red and then outcry. We still celebrate a date a foreign nation came here rather than our own federation date. I know.... what can you do.
I'm not sure why we don't make a thing of it, $1 a balloon filled with paint throw it at the statue we could start raising money and fund things like infrastructure, community services etc. But meh.
So anyway, the event as expected as it does every year made front page news and mainstream T.V segments talking about the Australia day debate, what Captain Cook did when he came here. Talking about the atrocities towards Indigenous people.
Now for anyone whose been following my blogs you'd be aware that I'm keen on teaching little miss about her Indigenous culture and heritage. Ranging from going out and creating stone tools, visiting sites of cultural significance, introducing her to elders and a whole range of things.
What I've always wondered is when she would understand what we were doing because let's be honest kids don't understand the world around them when they are young. They just follow us around and do as we do and if we're doing things they just want to do it too.
But as we approached the statue of Cook little miss stopped, in shock. I looked at her and didn't know what was happening and I'll be completely honest I had no idea this was the statue that got painted in red. I don't pay much attention to it because it's usually just divisional news trying to get ratings.
But little miss says "What! It's real? I asked her what was real and she started telling me about the statue and how people painted it and this whole break down of what people were saying about Australia day, Captain Cook and killing Indigenous people.
Now, these aren't discussions we've ever had because frankly I want her to make her own decision on matters and the relevance of 234 years ago is important but it's not a priority at this age or something that I want to throw down on a 4 (today 5) year old.
But none the less I kept her talking because I wanted to know how much she had picked up on and how much mainstream media impacts people especially kids.
As she spoke she spoke of it as a bad thing what Cook had done and she couldn't understand why he killed indigenous people and just live with them. We talked some more and I started asking her about Indigenous people and what she knew about them.
As we spoke I informed her that they had a flag and she said I know, I asked her what colour it was and she says Red, Yel...... wait, mine! I'm indigenous? I looked at her and smiled. I asked her if she'd remembered all the stuff we'd been doing with the caves, the art, the stones, the birthing trees.
She stopped and in that moment there was complete silence, the first time ever. She didn't really say much else I did ask her abit more but I think she was still processing it all.
She did ask what happened to Cook and if anyone told him off for what he did. I said he went to the Polynesian Islands and they killed and ate him. I don't think that was a good answer because she was quite upset and said the police should have got him.
So, I learned that it took 5 years for the penny to drop and the moment that I thought it would happen it wasn't it. It was a silly statue of a bloke that got painted red. I learned something new that day too.
