National Wattle Day blooming in Canberra next week - where to celebrate the golden icon

Wattle is in bloom and the golden Aussie icon will be feted on the national day, September 1, this Tuesday, which is also the first day of spring.

Landmarks including Questacon, the National Carillon, Kings Avenue Bridge and Bowen Place will light up in yellow this Monday and Tuesday.

Government House will be hosting celebrations on the eve of Wattle Day, Linda Hurley, wife of Governor-General David Hurley, singing her own composition, The Wattle Bloom, with primary school children on Monday afternoon.

Wattle Day Association president Dr Suzette Searle, based in Canberra, said there was a common perception that wattle was celebrated on August 1, but the National Wattle Day on September 1 was first held in 1910 in NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

World War I broke out in 1914 and that prompted some changes to the national day.

"In 1916, the NSW branch of the Wattle Day League asked if they could change it back to the first of August, because that was the time the Cootamundra wattle was flowering around Sydney and they wanted to sell fresh sprigs of wattle for the war effort," Dr Searle said.

"It stayed that way in NSW up until 1992 when the Governor-General proclaimed it across Australia on the first of September. But, obviously, people in Australia have been celebrating whenever the wattle was in full bloom. So, from north to south, people have been been celebrating from July, August to late September, down in Adelaide."

Dr Searle, who is writing a book about wattle and its significance, said it was a unifying symbol, its diversity reflecting Australia as "a nation of Indigenous peoples and colonists, settlers, immigrants and refugees from across the world".

The unifying force was more important than ever during difficult times such as bushfires and COVID-19. And it was impossible to resist its sheer sunniness of wattle.

"It just lifts my spirits, I just can't help it," Ms Searle said.

"Every time I see a wattle in full bloom, I just feel happy."

There are more than 1000 species of wattle in Australia, each with its own unique scent.

"There are more wattles than eucalypts in Australia. We really are the land of the wattle."

And in one of the more bizarre wattle anecdotes, the famous comedy troupe Monty Python is thought to have co-opted a ditty about the wattle for its infamous Bruces Sketch from none other than Canberra journalist and lobbyist, Richard Farmer.

Mr Farmer is credited with writing: The great Australian wattle is the symbol of our land, you can put it in a bottle or hold it in your hand.

A slightly reworked version made its way into the Bruces Sketch in which Monty Python lampoons macho Australia: This here's the wattle, the emblem of our land. You can stick it in a bottle, you can hold it in your hand.

Mr Farmer, 77, said on Friday he wrote the wattle ode while at the Public Service Board in the mid-1960s.

"It was a frosty morning, the wattle was out and I just wrote the ditty as I walked to work," he said.

It was only some years later that he realised Monty Python had used his words when someone walked into his bottle shop in Manuka wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Wattle in a Bottle words.

"I said to him, 'I wrote that'. And he looked at me as though I was mad. He said, 'No, it was Monty Python'. And I said, 'Oh, well'. And that was it. I'd love to have one of the T-shirts," Mr Farmer said.

In honour of the ditty, there will be all kinds of wattles in bottles at the National Arboretum this weekend, as well as wattle walks on Saturday and Tuesday.