By Dominic Cadden 

Australia! Australia! Australia! ... Day. It's not quite the Nuremberg Rally – the dress code is less formal and there's more grilled meat on offer – but you're in the right football park.

Australia Day is the day Australians celebrate everything they are: girt by sea and pissed by lunchtime, abounded by nature's gifts and obese after 18 sausages. Advance Australia fair-to-middling Sportsbet odds on Ricky Ponting top-scoring in the cricket. We'll leave it to God to save the Queen because we’re busy saving room in the fridge for the beer and lamb chops to take out to the Australia Day BBQ. 

Australia’s national day doesn't compare to anything in the UK. For a start, the Scots, Welsh, Irish and English try and hide their national days behind saints days from a religion that only a minority of the population has more than a half-hearted interest in. Take St George's Day, based around some guy who held top position in the dragon-slaying charts for three straight weeks way back in 301 A.D. It's pathetic. He's the patron saints of scouts, for god's sake, and even they can't put in a committed effort. All the dib-dib-dibbers get together on the nearest convenient Sunday, because they can't be arsed dropping everything where they stand, no matter what they're doing, to slip into the dogshit-brown duds on April 23rd and take to the streets to get knotted, or whatever they do. Even if Australia Day fell on a Wednesday and the nation was in the middle of defending against an alien invasion, Aussies would still stop for a BBQ, fireworks and a game of beach touch football that wouldn’t end until someone had to be resuscitated. Meanwhile the English still whinge on about, "Why can't we do something for St. George's Day? All them forriners get Ramadan and Diwali an' that, whose country is it anyway?" But of course, nothing ever happens because the main aim of all this whining seems to be to ritually recreate the pain of St. George's agonising wound – at least in people who hear this bollocks. The English can't even get behind St George's Day enough to make it a public holiday, whereas it's a central tenet of Australia Day that the sacred date is commemorated with the typical Australian activity of not doing any work.

The biggest deal of St George's Day is the Queen giving out The Order of The Garter, which sounds like an official ranking system for that popular English sport, transvestism. Maybe it is, which might explain why the Tories do pretty well out of it. Does anyone actually care enough to know? Scotland and Wales don't do any better. Outside of the UK, most people think St Andrew's Day is the first day of the British Open, and that Daffid's Day is the day Welsh people buy Daffodils to support the knees of their overweight rugby props. At least there’s no confusion with Australia Day.

St Patrick's Day is a bit different, and in spirit at least, it is a little more closely related to Australia Day. The namesake saint is far less at the centre of celebrations for St Patrick's Day than four-leaf clover or Guinness. It's a day that's more about Irish jingoism and the myth of some kind of non-partisan Emerald Isle, and that's partly the reason why St Pat's Day travels so well outside of Ireland. From Argentina and America to Austria and Australia, this day for dressing up as a leprechaun for no good reason is widely observed by people celebrating the fact that they don't (or no longer) live in Ireland. Wherever there's a pub stocking an Irish beer, you'll also find people raising a pint to the greatest of all Irish inventions, the hangover. 

Of course, Australia Day also has a historical basis to it. January 26th marks the anniversary of that day in 1788 when Major George Johnson became the first of the English colonising party to come ashore at present-day Sydney. (Actually, strictly speaking, that honour should belong to a bloke called James Ruse, who was the convict Major Johnson was taking a piggy-back ride on from the boat so he wouldn't get his shoes wet.) Australia had been claimed for England 18 years earlier by Captain Cook and in the seventeenth century the Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog charted much of the West Australian coast but decided the land wasn't of any use. Plus his crew were freaked out by all the ginormous, hopping rats. Of course, this was before the resources industry was invented. Back then, people thought whole economies could be run on spices and Port Hedland isn't exactly great clove-growing country.

The 1788 landing was significant because it kicked off the European settlement of Australia, although the English fleet were only two days ahead of a French party led by Comte de La Perouse, who was also eyeing off the Southern Land. So in effect, Australia was possibly just two days away from becoming a French colony. Just think, if the French had landed first vast tracts of Australia would have been used for growing Froggy-style wines. The motherland would probably have gone out into the deserts of South and Western Australia to blow up nuclear bombs, we'd have cafes popping up on every street corner, the inner cities would have these perfectly coiffed metrosexuals poncing about with their scarves and a certain je ne sais quoi, and...wait a minute... those cunning bastards! Anyway, Captain Phillip's officers had a courteous exchange of supplies with the French and offered them any assistance they needed. By strange convenience, the French ships were never seen or heard from again after this – they simply disappeared.

January 26th was first celebrated in the colony in 1808 as ‘Foundation Day’. Major George Johnson was still around, and despite falling out of his horse-drawn buggy after getting spifflicated when celebrations began early the night before, he marked the date by leading the officers of the New South Wales Corp in arresting Governor William Bligh. This became known as the ‘Rum Rebellion’ and set a precedent for Australia Day as an orgy of nationalism with lots of military hardware flashed about.

While the date eventually came to be known across the nation by most people as Australia Day, for some others it went by a different name – Invasion Day. This isn’t just some recent PC invention by pasty, soap-avoiding, pot-smoking hippie vegetarians, either. Way back in 1938, Aboriginal groups made January 26th ‘A Day of Mourning and Protest’, which in turn became ‘Invasion Day’ from the time many Aborigines and white sympathisers refused to acknowledge the over-the-top Bicentennial celebrations in 1988. Consequently, it's probably best to avoid discussing Australia Day with any Aboriginal people, especially if you still have a strong English accent and are not prepared to donate them a Union Jack to burn. If it comes up, just say "Sorry" a lot. I mean, you have to understand their point of view. It’s a bit like all your neighbours having a date every year when they have a big party to celebrate the day they nicked all your dad’s fruit and vegetable plants, his car, his BBQ, fishing rods, garden tools, your aunts and anything else that was sitting around the yard – all things the neighbours still enjoy to this day. You have to admit, it would be a bit hard to get into the spirit of things. Today, many Australia Day celebrations formally acknowledge the wrongdoings to the Aboriginal people in some manner. It sounds like a bit of a downer, but nothing more alcohol and the comedy of white people attempting to dance to didgeridoo music can’t quickly fix.

No matter where you are in Australia, there are some common elements to Australia Day celebrations. Usually the day starts with a flag raising and a mass citizenship ceremony. It's not actually compulsory for new Australians to wait until Australia Day to be officially sworn in as citizens. It's just that this is the one day of the year that even government officials are allowed to call anyone ‘mate’ if they can't pronounce their name properly, so it works out best for everyone.   

Later, there’s always some kind of community meal outdoors that’s usually preceded by the words “biggest”. As in, “Australia’s biggest breakfast omelette,” or “The world’s biggest sausage roll” or – my favourite – “The Biggest BBQ in the Universe,” which always makes me imagine herds of livestock being mustered into a blast furnace, then emerging on a conveyor belt out the other end where enormous circular saws slice them into steak thickness. Thousands more similar outdoor meals occur around the nations, private picnics or BBQs that bring together family, friends and assorted swarms of insects and arachnids.

As a nation, Australians love sport so much that our newsreaders can read the death toll from a yacht race and still tell us who's ahead on line honours and handicap. No surprise then that even on Australia Day there are serious, athletic pursuits such as international cricket matches, triathlons and running races, but these are largely in the minority. Mostly it’s whacky stuff, such as racing ancient commuter ferries that are overflowing with passengers or ‘iron guts’ relays (which usually involve eating, drinking, running and spewing). There’s even a race where people paddle on giant inflatable thongs through the sea, the main purpose being to make it the “world’s biggest” race for... erm, people paddling giant inflatable thongs, I guess. (This year the race at Glenelg Beach, Adelaide will attempt to break the world record of 908 set at North Bondi in 2009).

There are several small regional variations to Australia Day. In Perth events are a bit low-key by comparison because people there consider the holiday as kind of a Sydney thing, so they feel they should be aloof from it all on principle. Sydney of course thinks it’s all about Sydney, so the city goes overboard with historical re-enactments, tall ship races, jet fighter planes buzzing the Opera House and a thousand other things before they actually attempt to blow any unAustralian aircraft clean out of the sky with pyrotechnics. Melbourne, of course, has to chuck on a big horse race at Caulfield and gets sardonically intellectual about the whole concept of the day with a comedy debate. In Hobart there’s the Big Day at The Beach theme, because, being almost exactly the middle of summer, Australia Day is often the only day it’s warm enough to go in the water off Hobart. Darwin has its own style, marking the date a ‘ute run’ that actually allows any type of vehicle, and for sport there are several typically parochial events such as cane toad racing and The Great Aussie Thong Throw.

In all these places and many, many more, the day typically ends with a huge fireworks display. Unlike Guy Fawkes Night, there is absolutely no historical relevance to fireworks on Australia Day. They merely provide a suitably orgasmic expression of our excitement for being Australian.  

The Ten Commandments of Australia Day

1. Get outside. Now. It’s totally UnAustralian to be indoors on Australia Day, even if the sun is harsh enough to make your fragile northern skin melt clean off, if the sand whipped up by the ocean breeze doesn’t blast it off first.
2. Take an Australian flag, preferably worn about your person. This year, the Australian flag is being worn as an off-the-shoulder sarong-style wrap for girls and a daring toga drape for guys that’s pinned at the waist with the remainder wrapped around the hips to make a set of matching briefs that can be lifted easily for flashing.

3. Compulsory footwear: thongs. None of that fancy foreign nonsense, just your simple, made-in-China rubber model in a single primary colour.
4. The typical Australia Day diet is based around beer and lots of burnt animal flesh. Vegetarians are not excused today – it’s a moral thing. Do you think the Diggers in the trenches were fighting for tofu sausages?
5. Stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Ahmed, Yasmina, Chen, Olga and Dinesh and get naturalized. It doesn’t matter if you’re already a citizen ­– you can have a second wedding, can’t you?
6. Don’t bother to introduce yourself – on Australia Day everyone is Australian and everyone is ‘mate’.
7. Play a sport. It doesn’t matter if the cricket pitch is made out of soft sand or that you have to use a dead wallaby as the football. Get into it, it’s your patriotic duty.
8. Get into the Australian spirit – Bundaberg rum, for example, but local beers are also accepted.
9. You must watch the fireworks – it’s Australia’s version of standing for the pledge of allegiance. Watch even if you have epilepsy, perforated eardrums, a heart condition or you’re up the duff – it will prove that you have that great Australian strength of character. Or that you’re really drunk.
10. Commiserate with the Aboriginal people, even if you don’t know any. If you’ve never actually met an Aborigine, then that’s because there’s not that many left – and ironically, that has a lot to do with the date you’re commemorating in the first place.