The second time I got a punch on the jaw was working on an early morning milk delivery round before heading to school, aged 14.

One of the other teens was annoyed I had to leave early to make the 8.05 am coach that bussed us to the Catholic school 9 miles away (the local council seemed disinclined to support or permit a Catholic secondary in our district).

Anyway – back on the milk run – ‘Wally’ bopped me just as I was jumping off the milk float’s back step. It connected a bit lighter than he intended, as I’d been stepping off when he’d swung his jab.

Along with the blow came some attempted slurs from the others, most probably Fenian or Taig-infused. While just sticks and stones stuff, the insults were intended to hurt, diminish, and shame.

‘You’re different to us; you’re not as good. We rule this turf; not you ‘kafllik’ interlopers!’ was part of the dominant narrative back then.

Corrosive sectarianism – conflict arising from the blind conviction that one group is more deserving than another – was rife in Scotland’s west. The general insistence was that one set of cultural, political, and spiritual traditions (the Protestant ones) were more prized and valid than other (especially Catholic) ones: Lots of jokes about daft, drunken Micks, randy priests and prissy nuns (some of them hilarious, too!)

With the whole murderous ‘troubles’ vibe from across the Irish Sea, the West of Scotland could feel like a fraught place to grow up and live.

Arriving in Australia 20-plus years later and happily leaving the in-bred bitterness and religious rancour behind, I was pleased to discover an inclusive land where no one asked which school you went to or which foot you kicked with.

No one talked much about their – or your – race or creed. Unaware of Australia’s sectarian past, I found a fine country not much obsessed with starkly divided ‘us and them’ (except maybe when it came to all AFL clubs and Collingwood).

It was a living, thriving ‘melting pot’ as Blue Mink once sang, which I was quickly besotted by.

The haves and have-nots discussed cars, jobs and holidays, but not so much entitlements to political access and influence.

Crikey… Many of you had holiday homes as well as your main houses! Well, ‘la-dee-bloody-dah’ thought I.

There even seemed a kind of pride (before that term was expropriated) at how this nation had somehow melded the best of its convict and colonial heritage together with what was intrinsically strong locally, and forged a unique – yet maverick – national identity. An identity that seemed different by dint of its authentic inclusiveness of Asian, European, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Slavic and many other ethnicities and nations.

Back then, the vibe appeared to be easygoing, self-assured, and not weighed down by the yoke of a ‘hard feelings’ history.

That’s not to say that there weren’t any societal problems or grudges under the surface (and some seem to have worsened). But as starry-eyed as I was, I neither looked for them nor had them thrust in my face every media-covered minute of the day. Anyway, I was way too busy getting on with the business of trying to fit in and become some kind of Aussie.

Now, over 20 years on, that no longer seems to be the case and today the joint feels different.

We’ve swung from egalitarian to elite; the biggity and the bigoted; the belongs and the be-damneds; cherished and cursed; the self-loving and the self-hating.

Any landing Martian or Vesuvian tuning in to our media would get a very different take on our society than the one I had on touching down in 1999.

We’re increasingly being profiled – within our borders – as a nation divided thanks to the ‘with us/against us’ exhortations of this referendum.

And it’s way more acetous than when we considered potential republic status just three months after I first arrived.

I’d put a lot of the blame on two key things: a ballot question that appeared cunningly layered to some, and the ‘take-sides’ tenor of media reports that simplistically profiles voters for ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ as sworn adversaries.

News outlets have already picked sides and simply peddle pre-determined propaganda to see if they can yet force – or influence – a result their team can crow about in the aftermath, which will further propagate polarised allegiances.

Rather than being one and free, we’re overtly assigned to one sect or another in a vote that puts the poll in polarising.

So what sect are you in?

It seems we’re either Indigenous Australians or – as has newly emerged – we’re imported newbies.

Some get to be proud, while others should be eternally ashamed.

We have the traditional and the transplanted.

There’s the cultural versus the colonial (yet even imperialists had highly developed culture you’d have to admit?).

The right-on and the right wing.

From my experience, when any sect insists that they’re better, more entitled, or superior to another sect then we’re back to the worst kind of sectarianism, no matter whether it’s cloaked in imperial right or cultural cosplay.

While I ponder who will really win out of this divisive cultural competition, some media voices insist that one side are dinosaurs, dickheads, racists, and dumbos.

The other side are dubbed Marxist hawkers and commie agitators (yet extending the generous hand of tolerance and love, it’s countered).

But what about the generous dickheads, the loving dinosaurs, or humble hawkers among us … don’t they get any consideration?

We probably had room for ’em, even back in the noughties.

I mused to a Jewish pal that the burning rituals of some groups [like Buddhists and Indigenous peoples for example] are taken as mystically sacred, while priests wafting thuribles of steaming myrrh is oft derided as archaic mumbo-jumbo.

Who among us thinks that their smokescreens don’t stink?

Any scent of ‘my-smoke-is-holier-than-thou’s’ signals or typifies spiritual sectarianism. But just like smog, claims of spiritual superiority are both insubstantial and toxic.

I find myself painfully lamenting how the Australia I first encountered and grew to love only two decades ago seems to have morphed into something different and more riven by drivel and diatribes. Like we’re copycatting America.

Things nowadays are painted as being either black and white, right or wrong, good or bad. It’s a tedious kind of tribal sectarianism.

Remember that Martin Luther King Jr. fellow? He was on record with a ‘colour and character’ quote that remains the most brilliant antidote to sectarianism and racism.

As you Google it to refresh your memory, I’ll continue to bemoan the damage this ballot seems to have inflicted on Australia’s supposedly ‘one and free’ character.