section_path: Celebrations elsewhere/Oceania/Australia
section_name: Australia
paragraph_text: Australia
  
  Saint Patrick's Day is not a public holiday in Australia, although it is celebrated each year across the country's states and territories. Festivals and parades are often held on weekends around 17 March in cities such as Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Melbourne. On occasion, festivals and parades are cancelled. For instance, Melbourne's 2006 and 2007 Saint Patrick's Day festivals and parades were cancelled due to sporting events (Commonwealth Games and Australian Grand Prix) being booked on and around the planned Saint Patrick's Day festivals and parades in the city. In Sydney the parade and family day was cancelled in 2016 due to financial problems. However, Brisbane's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which was cancelled at the outbreak of World War II and wasn't revived until 1990, was not called off in 2020 as precaution for the COVID-19 pandemic, in contrast to many other Saint Patrick's Day parades around the world.
  
  The first mention of Saint Patrick's Day being celebrated in Australia was in 1795, when Irish convicts and administrators, Catholic and Protestant, in the penal colony came together to celebrate the day as a national holiday, despite a ban against assemblies being in place at the time. This unified day of Irish nationalist observance would soon dissipate over time, with celebrations on Saint Patrick's Day becoming divisive between religions and social classes, representative more of Australianness than of Irishness and held intermittingly throughout the years. Historian Patrick O'Farrell credits the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin and Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne for re-igniting St Patrick's Day celebrations in Australia and reviving the sense of Irishness amongst those with Irish heritage. The organisers of the Saint Patrick's festivities in the past were, more often than not, the Catholic clergy which often courted controversy. Bishop Patrick Phelan of Sale described in 1921 how the authorities in Victoria had ordered that a Union Jack be flown at the front of the Saint Patrick's Day parade and following the refusal by Irishmen and Irish-Australians to do so, the authorities paid for an individual to carry the flag at the head of the parade. This individual was later assaulted by two men who were later fined in court.
  
  Saint Patrick's Day is not a public holiday in Australia, although it is celebrated each year across the country's states and territories. Festivals and parades are often held on weekends around 17 March in cities such as Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Melbourne. On occasion, festivals and parades are cancelled. For instance, Melbourne's 2006 and 2007 Saint Patrick's Day festivals and parades were cancelled due to sporting events (Commonwealth Games and Australian Grand Prix) being booked on and around the planned Saint Patrick's Day festivals and parades in the city. In Sydney the parade and family day was cancelled in 2016 due to financial problems. However, Brisbane's Saint Patrick's Day parade, which was cancelled at the outbreak of World War II and wasn't revived until 1990, was not called off in 2020 as precaution for the COVID-19 pandemic, in contrast to many other Saint Patrick's Day parades around the world.
  
  The first mention of Saint Patrick's Day being celebrated in Australia was in 1795, when Irish convicts and administrators, Catholic and Protestant, in the penal colony came together to celebrate the day as a national holiday, despite a ban against assemblies being in place at the time. This unified day of Irish nationalist observance would soon dissipate over time, with celebrations on Saint Patrick's Day becoming divisive between religions and social classes, representative more of Australianness than of Irishness and held intermittingly throughout the years. Historian Patrick O'Farrell credits the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin and Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne for re-igniting St Patrick's Day celebrations in Australia and reviving the sense of Irishness amongst those with Irish heritage. The organisers of the Saint Patrick's festivities in the past were, more often than not, the Catholic clergy which often courted controversy. Bishop Patrick Phelan of Sale described in 1921 how the authorities in Victoria had ordered that a Union Jack be flown at the front of the Saint Patrick's Day parade and following the refusal by Irishmen and Irish-Australians to do so, the authorities paid for an individual to carry the flag at the head of the parade. This individual was later assaulted by two men who were later fined in court.