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The Importance of the Queens Birthday Holiday

It's a miserable, wet Monday in Melbourne.

It's a public holiday here today, the Queens Birthday Holiday in fact. Which is sort of odd, because today does not actually coincide with Queen Elizabeth II's actual birthday. Our British based constitutional head of state- represented in her absence by governors in each state and the governor-general nationally- was actually born on April 21.

I think the reason we have it today goes back to the time of George V, who was born on June 3. In times gone by, we probably celebrated and commemorated the occasion with a fair amount of pomp and ceremony. The streets were probably filled with folk dancing and regal bands playing Advance Australia Fair and God Save the Queen. Three Cheers for the Queen!

Not that we contemporary Australians really care too much about any of that, we'll just take our long weekend each June and do with it what we like. We are good at that too; arranging our public holidays so that they fall on a Monday allowing us the pleasure of a long weekend. But the Queen's Birthday is quite a significant public holiday all the same.

It is the day of the traditional Melbourne Demons v Collingwood Magpies AFL match (which the Mighty Demons won, for a change). It also marks the start of the ski season. Plus, it's a long haul from here to our next public holiday, Melbourne Cup Day in November. Yep, that's right we have a public holiday for a horse race. And why wouldn't we? Otherwise we would have to go from June to Christmas without a public holiday, and this is Australia, so we won't be doing that, thanks all the same.

Yep, this is a critical long-weekend.

Posted on Monday, June 14, 2004 at 04:26 PM |

Comments

Hello

In actual fact, Sri Lanka would in theory have the most amount of public holidays. Considering that they have a public holiday each time there is a full moon. Intrestingly enough December 26th 2004 the day of the tsunami was also a public holiday although it was a sunday, this occurs due the siting of the full moon.

Posted by: Hello | Sunday, June 12, 2005 at 04:22 PM

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