P

eople gathered around the globe to celebrate Australia Day on Thursday, with Indonesia joining in on the fun.

In Jakarta, the Australian Embassy opened the annual Australia-Indonesia Cinema Festival with a special screening of the Oscar-nominated film Lion.

In Bali, Australians celebrated at the Australia Day Pool Party and Australia Day BBQ.

International students across Indonesia partied away the day to the tune of the Triple J Hottest 100, an annual countdown of the most popular songs to be played on radio by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Triple J.

“I ate Vegemite on toast while listening to the countdown,” said Isobel Scott, an Australian student interning in Jakarta through the Australian Consortium for In Country Indonesian Studies.

Australian talent Flume took first place with his crowd pleaser “Never Be Like You”.

Yet, a bigger statement was made by a song that protests against the timing of Australia Day, A.B. Original’s “January 26”, which came in at number 16.

Australia Day is the anniversary of the British colonization of Australia when the British First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson, New South Wales, in 1788. The day, however, is also remembered for being when the indigenous Aborigine people were dispossessed of their land and hundreds of thousands of them were killed.

“That was our big hope and aim with the song [...] to start those conversations,” A.B. Original’s emcee Trials told Fairfax Media amid a growing debate over whether to move the national day.

In Sydney, Australia’s cultural capital, locals continued to embrace the fun and funk, with the annual ferry race drawing a big crowd on Sydney’s Darling Harbor.

“We’re just soaking it all in —loving it,” said Angela Mansfield, a long-time Sydney local who bet on the ferry race.

Australia Day also saw a new Australian of the Year, Professor Alan Mackay-Sim, whose research into nerve regeneration has enabled a paralyzed man to regrow his spinal cord and move again.

— The writer is an Intern at The Jakarta Post