Every year our nation celebrates our national day with more and more patriotism. In fact, it is impossible to not see an Australian flag in some shape or form...from face tattooes to togs to capes and cars laden with flapping ensigns.

However, there persists these ungrateful sods who want to chuck mud on the celebration of our day and it seems a great misfortune that the chosen Australian of the Year Mick Dodson thought it pertinent to want a 'conversation' on the change of our day as it represents the saddest of days to 'his' people.

The 26th of January celebrates the incredible feat of the greatest seaborne migration of more then a thousand people....some free, some soldiers, some in chains. With them they brought the foundation of the peaceful society that has continued to draw in millions from across the seas today, seeking refuge from the ugliness of poverty and oppression and the simple inability to live without hindrance.

Under the leadership of Arthur Phillip, peace and liberty set seed on this continent, not through the roar of an army but by the rule of law. A law that stated if you do right you will be rewarded by your actions, if you do wrong you will be punished  and redeemed, not by a mob of tyrants but by laws and a court system that had thousands of years to get the balance right.

Over a quick succession of years, with the plantation of all the institutions of a free society, the nation grew to have an independent judiciary, trial by peers, elected governance, and universal suffrage regardless of sex, race or religion .

Only a handful of of nations can claim this remarkable freedom, which was achieved without guillotines, riots, civil wars or toppling of governments.

In 221 years we have achieved so much, yes there were wrongs done within the law, but within the law they were righted.

Those who were here before the eleven ships set up camp in Port Jackson also have reason to celebrate, they endured change from their unnumbered tribes to be absorbed into the largest empire of peoples the world had seen. Despite dispossession, protection, assimilation and paternalism they endured and have joined in the success of the nation as teachers, clergymen, athletes, farmers, elected leaders and artists. They, similarly to the hundreds of ethnic groups that make up this Australia, are a great part of our Big Story. It's wrong to romanticise the lives of the original inhabitants of this land, just as it is to do so for any of our forebears' former homelands.

My ancestors escaped poverty and war to allow me the privilege to eke out a life here in this country, to be free, free to be who I truly am.

For that is a reason to celebrate on the 26th of January, the day that the seeds of freedom were sown.