Australians have a strange relationship with patriotism. It’s debatable whether a majority know that Australia became a nation on January 1, 1901, let alone the sequence of events that led the six British colonies to federate.

It’s not as though it’s ancient history. The movement for federation kicked off in earnest following an 1889 speech, now known as the Tenterfield Oration, given by Henry Parkes, then premier of the Colony of New South Wales (NSW). One hundred and ten years later, then NSW premier Bob Carr claimed the speech was as significant to Australians as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is to Americans. This would come as a surprise to the vast majority of Australians who would have trouble even recognizing Parkes’s name, let alone his 1889 speech.

In her study of history teaching in Australian schools, Anna Clark suggests that this is because federation was boring when compared to other nations’ exciting origin stories. It’s true that Australia’s birth wasn’t marked by struggle, war, or revolution. But regardless of whether federation was boring or not, it was certainly shameful. Australia’s “founding fathers” were preoccupied with limiting non-white immigration and restricting working-class organization and power and obsessed with creating a free market economy that would enrich themselves and their mates.