Forgive me, Foxy, I read your first sentence and assumed you were going off into a postmodernist waffle about many realities and the unknowability of truth and tropes and topos and so on, that I didn't read any further. Now that I have, you have not only my attention but my agreement. I urge all OLO readers to give serious thought to what you write.

Of course, the interpretation of history is subject to both stance and methodology, and perhaps is never 'complete', and historians are often so many blind men with a herd of elephants, and dependent on biased accounts and fragmentary written records. But when it comes down to it, if Phenomenon A occurred, we may learn of its details fairly comprehensively, so then the question becomes what is its context, its hows and whys and wherefores, the social forces or policies that facilitated it. Ideally, this requires the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but in practice, most of us are pretty selective in what we count as truth, and that is where ideology and stance come in.

A proper scientific approach, such as I believe Dr Windshuttle applies in this case, would exhaust all sources and deal with whatever turns up, regardless of preconceptions. Genuine research tends to uncover surprises that have to be explained. Phony research comes up with no surprises, but starts with a 'truth' and looks only for whatever bolsters that 'truth' - like in the Medieval church, and a bit like what passes these days for 'Indigenous research', but that's another story.

Hey Joe! Like the song says; “where ya gonna run to…”
But no dice, I don’t buy it. Although it is gratifying to observe your transformation to conciliatory attitude in your comments. As I have observed earlier, it is awe inspiring to observe how racists rapidly reform their intimidatory behaviour when they perceive threat, real or imagined, aimed back at them.

This is known as a clear symptom of the disturbance of racist bigotry, and its basis of fear. e.g. it lashes out until it inevitably produces retaliation, and builds more fear, becoming a vicious cycle that perpetuates itself. Go and take a cold shower Joe, you may feel better.

Chronic myopia is another clear symptom of the illness, for the article of Cameron R., and other widely distributed evidence, clearly demonstrates the reason many incidences of such barbaric practice was constrained to remote areas, was because the remoteness of that period realised there was less likelihood it would be observed. It is consistent with insidious colonial practice patently observed as commonly known of such practice, as it is outside the law, to an extent it could never be justified [and is why such laws were never introduced].

That racism is an illegitimate construct, its tactics are observed identical of their banality and distubance, as we observe with the recent stalking of a female poster on OLO by ozzie, and the open and blatant collusion within debate for example, demonstrated in the above posts from Foxy to yourself Joe [aka Loudmouth].

Hey Joe, I already gave you that name. One name. Terry Mason and his daughters. Page 66 of The Last Protector.

So, you can choose to educate yourself by reading my book, or you can choose not to. It's entirely up to you.

And if you choose to educate yourself, may I suggest that after you've read about Terry Mason's daughters you then have a look at the cases of Thelma Reid (The Last Protector, p. 40 and onwards), of Mrs Anderson's daughters (p. 45 onwards), of Susan Grant (p. 47 onwards), of Paul Hurst (p. 52 onwards), of Justine Reynolds (p. 59 onwards) and so on ...

"A proper scientific approach, such as I believe Dr Windshuttle applies in this case, would exhaust all sources and deal with whatever turns up, regardless of preconceptions."

First up, Keith Windschuttle is not a "Dr": his highest qualification is an MA (see http://www.sydneyline.com/Author.htm). Nothing inherently wrong with that - I've met plenty of MAs who were more knowledgeable than than their PhD "intellectual superiors". Windschuttle, alas, isn't one of them.

If you believe that Windschuttle applies "a proper scientific approach" to history, you are sadly mistaken (the idea that history should be properly scientific is questionable, but I'll ignore that for now). In a discussion with a panel including historian Peter Read on Radio National's Awaye program, Windschuttle's repeated response when Read cited of documents that Windschuttle hadn't read was to deny that the documents existed. You can check out the audio at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/awaye/stories/2010/2814638.htm.