In a regional town like Wangaratta, belonging isn’t an abstract idea.
It’s something we feel - or don’t - in everyday moments.
It shows up in who stays when things get hard, who turns up for working bees and emergencies, who looks after the land, and who takes responsibility for the place we share.
As Australia Day approaches, conversations about belonging often become louder, sharper, and more polarised.
For some, the day is a celebration.
For others, it carries discomfort or grief.
In regional communities, these differences don’t stay theoretical - they sit across kitchen tables, sporting clubs, schools, and paddocks.
Avoiding the question of belonging doesn’t help.
But neither does reducing it to slogans or symbolic gestures.
Belonging is not something we inherit automatically, nor something we declare once a year.
It is something that forms slowly, through relationship - with people, with place, and with responsibility over time.
Living in North East Victoria has taught me that land is not neutral.
It shapes us whether we pay attention or not.
Seasons, fire, water, soil, and weather quietly structure the limits of what’s possible here.
Communities that endure are usually those that learn to live within those limits rather than pretend they don’t exist.
That’s why belonging can’t be reduced to identity alone.
It’s not only about who we are or where we came from, but about how we live now - and what we’re willing to be responsible for.
In regional towns, belonging often looks practical.
It’s found in caring for waterways and roadsides, preparing for fire seasons, looking out for neighbours, raising children who understand the place they live in, and staying engaged even when it would be easier to leave or disengage.
These forms of belonging don’t make headlines, but they matter.
They are quiet, cumulative, and grounded.
They don’t require perfection - only attention and participation.
Australia Day tends to compress complex questions into simple positions.
Yet most people I know live somewhere in between.
They want honesty without hostility, reflection without accusation, and a future that feels shared rather than divided.
Belonging, in that sense, is not about erasing difference or denying history.
Nor is it about endlessly rehearsing it without moving forward.
It’s about recognising that living in a place carries obligations - to land, to community, and to those who come after us.
If we treat belonging as something static or symbolic, it quickly becomes fragile.
But if we treat it as a practice - something enacted through care, responsibility, and participation - it can grow stronger over time.
Perhaps Australia Day can serve less as a verdict on who belongs, and more as an invitation to ask how we are belonging - here, now, together.
That question doesn’t demand a single answer.
But it does ask something of all of us.
Mark Mathieson, Wangaratta
Cancellations of Clean Up Australia Day event
With great regret I have cancelled my Clean Up Australia event on Sunday, 1 March at 8am at Batchelor Green to clean up around our local waterways, due to lack of support from my local Landcare group.
I was told in no uncertain terms there is nothing wrong with the One Mile Creek or the Wareena Wetlands.
I disagree, and so do lots of members of the community who believe One Mile Creek is the most dirty and biggest rubbish tip of all our local waterways - which is why I registered my clean up event in the first place.
This is not the end of my efforts to clean up One Mile and Three Mile creeks and other waterways from litter, large household items, dead native animals, over grown areas of weeds and water plants and one other large problem that is taking over, which I noticed near the Perry Street Bridge last week.
So be assured I will not go away from caring for our waterways.
I might rejoin Waterwatch to check out the polluted water although I can always check out how the little native fish are surviving including Flat-headed Gudgeon, Aust Smelt or Un-specked Hardyhead, but with poor water conditions the Eastern Gambusia, Oriental Weatherloach and Gold fish could have gobbled them all up.
I know just the spot to check them out.
European carp have got out of control in One and Three Mile creeks so I guess I can always try and do something about them - I wonder how the herpes virus release is going?
Life is full of endless possibilities at the moment for me, I can’t be stopped that easily.
Diane Farmer, Wangaratta
Australia Day not as sweet by any other name
I recently received a notice from the Rural City of Wangaratta regarding a "Public Holiday Event" at Mitchell Avenue park on 26 January.
I reckon it should have been headed "Australia Day Celebration Event".
Nowhere in four paragraphs were the words Australia Day mentioned.
How disappointing, as were the Christmas banners along the main street saying Summer Festival Holidays (or along those lines) rather than wishing everybody a Merry Christmas.
What's happening Rural City of Wangaratta councilors, are we being weaned off everything that all Australians have held sacred and celebrated forever?
On Australia Day at the Mitchell Avenue park I hope everyone has a flag to fly.
Vince Pesic, Wangaratta
