I emigrated to Australia in early January 1987, aged 20. Moved into a run-down three level terrace house in a dodgy inner suburb of Sydney, and began settling in to the new ways, sights and scents of my adopted home. The smell of sickly sweet mangoes rotting and fresh frangipani flowers still triggers memories of my first real Australian summer. A national day of celebration was quickly upon me: January 26 is nominated as ‘Australia Day’, celebrating the first arrival of Captain Cook, who claimed this land for the British Crown. It’s a public holiday 3-day weekend, involving beer, barbecues, and ridiculous waving of the ugly Australian flag with patriotic pride. That particular morning dawned hot, and outside our scruffy student home, on a wide street where the heat was already shimmering off the asphalt, folk began to gather in the park. There were banners, drums, didgeridoos, ochre body painting, and cardboard signs everywhere, plus lots of black. Black armbands, black T-shirts, black flags, and of course black, brown, white, and pink faces. It was a …