When Is a National Holiday, Not a National Holiday?

I’ve been having fun putting together an article on Australian Public Holidays for housesittinginAustralia.com. No mean feat when you consider how many national holidays we have that are celebrated by different states on different dates.

Not that I’m unfamiliar with the seemingly illogical timing of public holidays though. After all, when I was growing up in England, I always found it interesting that the Queen had two birthdays - her real one (April 21st) and the Queen’s Birthday public holiday (the second Saturday in June).

At some particular stage of my childhood I started to reason that the public holiday was on a different day simply so that on her actual birthday she could open her presents, eat what she wanted and do whatever she wanted without having to go out in public. It all seemed quite logical, even as I got older.

However, having written the above website article, I’m now left with another Queen’s Birthday conundrum… because… along with the original two birthdays, I’ve discovered there are now three more official days to bake a cake and blow out candles. There’s the second Monday in June for everywhere Aussie (except Queensland and Western Australia), then the first Monday in October for Queensland, and somewhere between September and October for us Sandgropers.

I have yet to figure out a logical reason why it’s necessary to have all these dates - who knows maybe the Queen likes cakes and birthday whistles, or maybe it’s because she has too many parties and presents for one day. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m simply being way too whimsical about the whole thing and the dates were picked purely so that they didn’t clash with other celebrations and holidays around the world…

Either way, it’s probably a good thing that Australia doesn’t have any more states and territories, otherwise we’d have had even more opportunities to eat birthday cake. Plus, my article would have been longer… which would have left me wondering where to list each states’ names for the days around Easter. To say nothing of how to briefly describe the impact Melbourne Cup Day can have across the country - even though it’s only a public holiday in one state!