And 2021 was no different, as thousands of Australians protested against the celebration. Rallies took place across the country, with organisers asking protesters to wear face masks and remain socially distanced.

There are nearly 800,000 Aborigines in a population of 25 million in Australia, whose descendants date back about 50,000 years before British colonisers arrived. They suffer disproportionately high rates of suicide, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and imprisonment.

Protesters have demanded a treaty between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, recognition in the constitution, and an end to inequality. They also want the date of Australia Day to be changed, or abolished altogether.

Whether to change the date of Australia Day has been a subject of debate for many years, as has whether to change the Australian flag, which includes the British Union Jack.

The former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ruled out a change of flag. “That’s the one they have on their backpacks when they’re travelling overseas, that’s the flag that our soldiers have on their shoulder patches, that is our flag,” he told reporters.

How did Australia get its name?

From the 2nd century, Europeans referred to the vast expanse of land in the southern hemisphere as the ‘unknown southern land’ – or, in Latin, ‘terra australis incognita’.

In 1644, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman used the name ‘New Holland’ to refer to the land. Although the Dutch made expeditions to the land many times over the following centuries, they never claimed any territory there, assuming that the lack of fertile soil would make it impossible to colonise.

When British explorer James Cook claimed Australia’s east coast in 1770, he originally named it New Wales, before renaming it New South Wales.

It was Matthew Flinders, the British navigator who officially identified Australia as a continent, who suggested a return to the Latin name. In 1804, he referred to the land as Australia in a chart he created while held captive by the French in Mauritius.

However the name was met with disapproval back home. On his return to England, he published a book on his travels in 1814; the book was even renamed ‘A Voyage to Terra Australis’ without his consent. In it, he discussed his reasons for the name:

‘There is no probability, that any other detached body of land, of nearly equal extent, will ever be found in a more southern latitude; the name Terra Australis will, therefore, remain descriptive of the geographical importance of this country, and of its situation on the globe.

‘…Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.’

Flinders died in July 1814, and was buried at St James’s Gardens, London. Ten years after his death, the name was officially accepted by the British Admiralty in 1824.

Some believed the explorer’s grave was lost underneath a platform at London Euston, but in January 2019, archaeologists carrying out a mass excavation of graves to make way for the arrival of HS2 found his remains, with his name clearly engraved on the lead plate of his coffin.