Australia has more than a thousand kinds of wattle, almost all of them found nowhere else, and for one day a year the whole country notices them at once. Wattle Day falls on 1 September, which is also the first day of spring, and that is not a coincidence, it is the entire point. The first time the states celebrated it together was 1 September 1910, when New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia all marked the day at once, and it became a national day in 1992, when the Governor General proclaimed it. What happens on it is pleasingly small scale. People wear a sprig. Schools and community groups put plants in the ground. There are walking tours and seed giveaways, new citizens are welcomed at ceremonies held that morning, and Parliament House is lit green and gold.
What makes it worth telling is the idea underneath. Back in 1997 Rod Panter described Wattle Day as a national day that looks forward, to spring, and that celebrates good humour, fairness, generosity and informality. Not a day for remembering, a day for what is about to happen. Dr Suzette Searle, who is president of the Wattle Day Association, puts it as a celebration of where we live and who we are. So this is the easiest invitation in the paper. It is on a Monday, it costs nothing, and you can join in with a sprig on your coat or by putting one small tree in the ground. Somewhere near you, a wattle is already out.
Our short take: history and detail from the Wattle Day Association. Photograph: golden wattle at Beaufort, Victoria, by Elspeth Swan via iNaturalist under CC BY.
