A man who travels to Turkey each year to wear an Australian flag cape and sing Waltzing Matilda in honour of fallen diggers he’s never met, says it’s well past time for Indigenous Australians to move on from the events of over a century ago.
Brad Bailey, who also visits the battlefields in Ypres as part of his annual trip, said some people had become fixated on events that occurred years ago that can’t be changed now. “Yes, some bad things happened. But we don’t need to be constantly reminded of it decades later. What’s next? An annual march down the centre of the city?”
Proudly wearing his great grandfather’s medals from a 1915-16 posting on the Western Front, Bailey said colonisation was something that happened generations ago. “It’s certainly not something someone of my generation can relate to”.
