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The Forum > Article Comments > Australia Day 2017 > Comments

Australia Day 2017 : Comments

By Bob Ryan, published 5/1/2017

It is unfortunate that, when reasonable Australians strive to unite us all as a nation, there still persists an objection to celebrating January the 26th as Australia Day.

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"Who cares about the past?" Anzacs did each year and now great- grandkids do .
" This would indicate that England sought no new worlds to conquer; Cook claimed possession but England did not occupy". Excuse me , CAPTAIN Philip brought a 10gun ship and 500 military. Anzacs claimed possession of Anzac Cove but did not occupy...?
Posted by nicknamenick, Thursday, 5 January 2017 6:15:59 PM
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The recent fire works over Sydney Harbour News Eve 2017, marked Australia's 116th Birthday as a nation.

January 26th merely celebrates the founding of a Penal Colony by England, whose population in 1788 was less than the population of NSW today.

Most Australians see the 1st of January as the correct alternative date for Australia Day, but are deterred by it being New Years Day.

But, as stated on the Samuel Griffith Society's web site:

"The Commonwealth of Australia, by contrast, did not evolve over the centuries. At the stroke of midnight on 31 December 1900 it sprang into existence in an instant, its Constitution with it, fully- armed like the goddess Pallas Athena. The same is essentially true of the United States of America."
http://www.samuelgriffith.org.au/papers/html/volume%201/chap2.htm

Most obviously, the day before the 1st of January, or 31 December is the most appropriate date for Australia Day. It was also the last day of Colonialism in Australia.
Posted by roderick, Friday, 6 January 2017 9:28:56 AM
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Because Cook and Philip gave it all to George III , then today your house-block belongs to Mrs Duke of Edinburgh, then to Charles and Camilla. If UK goes broke our colonial landlords could sell us to Beijing Property Inc.

The past can be ignored but should history be falsified to assist ignoring it?

"As to those who did arrive in 1788, none among them liked being at Sydney Cove; for the government officials and military, it was their duty; . Trees gave no shade; meat was infested with maggots within minutes;"
Anzac Cove was the same so they didn't invade Anzac Cove.?

"Governor Phillip’s commission enjoined him to treat the natives kindly and fairly...The fact is, taken in the context of its time, the landing of foreigners in any part of the world could not have been more civil than that of the First Fleet; there was no overt aggression,"

North Korea's constitution promises freedom of the Press . In the context of 1788, shooting rabbits running on the heath and shooting heathens on the run was illegal.

29 April 1770: ".. warriors of Botany Bay, oppose the landing of Lieutenant James Cook who fires three times and, though wounded by small shot, the men.."
22 January 1788: While the English are eating, Phillip draws a circle around them in the sand. This ‘line in the sand’, secured by marines armed with muskets,..
9 February: The French ‘fire on the natives at Botany Bay to keep them quiet’
30 May. the killing of an Eora man in a canoe near (, Balmain),.
".. this Native having been murdered occasioned their seeking revenge.., but that did not happen until they had been ill treated by us in the lower part of the Harbour & fired upon by the French."
Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 6 January 2017 11:00:43 AM
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" Suppose, however, that Phillip had wanted to ask permission to land and set up a camp: Who would he have asked? "
31 May: Phillip .. near Boora (Long Bay) has a friendly meeting with 200 armed men..
14 September: Maugoran, a Burramattagal elder,( Parramatta) expresses his ‘great dissatisfaction’ at the number of Europeans who had settled ‘in their former territories’ at Rose Hill . Phillip writes:"If this man’s information can be depended on, the natives were very angry at so many people being sent to Rose-hill, certain it is that wherever our colonists fix themselves, the natives are obliged to leave that part of the country."
Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 6 January 2017 11:01:10 AM
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Yes our non reflective cousins have much to be thankful for. Thankful that the Spaniards, or indeed the Japanese more recently, did not occupy/invade/conquer Terra Australis/Oceania. I have no doubt from reading the accounts of Southern American natives, that the small, scattered tribes of our indigenous peoples would likewise have suffered the plagues, poxes and swords of the Conquistadors. Quite likely to the point of extinction.

The xenophobic and racially (in their minds) pure Japanese would have wholesale wiped everyone out who was deemed useless for their purposes during their march southwards to the capital cities and industrial centres of Australia, had the outcome of WW2 been different.
Posted by Albie Manton in Darwin, Friday, 6 January 2017 5:48:58 PM
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"All of Australasia .. to accommodate up to two million Japanese settlers. However, there are indications that the Japanese were also looking for a separate peace with Australia, and a satellite rather than colony status similar to that of Burma and the Philippines."

Like Britain , Japan offered improved , peaceful conditions and caused similar casualties ( without using poisoned flour). Spanish-type epidemics of small-pox were just as deadly:

Sydney, 14 July 1788:" They ‘appeared to be starving …
These people, and the sick seen on 24 June, might be the first to suffer from the introduced smallpox virus, which was to sweep through the Eora population one year later."
Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 6 January 2017 6:41:06 PM
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