...I was a bit surprised that Amanda Midlam omitted the historic catastrophe that two small pox epidemics inflicted to Aboriginal populations, and their continuing culture. When nine tenths of a population are eliminated, as they were for the Aboriginal communities throughout Australia from those pandemics, the result was cultural devastation. The rest is history; probably the point at which Amanda Midlams article picks up the batten.

...I would imagine Aboriginal tribal reaction at the time would mirror the reactions of Europeans to the plague: An event which was vastly inferior in consequences to white civilisation than the small pox epidemic was to Aboriginals, as a cultural comparison.

...It does not appear to me to be any master stroke of intelligence to conclude that this event on its own was the real reason behind the cultural destruction of the Aboriginal way of life. The survivors at that point became the lost tribe in the desert, wandering aimlessly to this day

Human pathogens are rather creditably not racist at all, Diver Dan. They will kill anybody who is immunodeficient regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. So implying that white Australians people are to blame for the effects that smallpox had on Australian aborigines, is like blaming the Africans for the existence of Ebola, Lassa Fever or AIDS.

Human pathogens are the enemies of the entire human race, Diver Dan. They were not invented by white people, even though there are many black people today who claim that white people invented AIDS to kill off the Africans. Knowing your mindset, perhaps you agree with them?

You might be interested to know, that AIDS is unique in that medial science knows exactly who “patient zero” was. He was a homosexual French Canadian airline steward who baffled medical science when he first exhibited unknown symptoms. Naturally, there are billboards up all over African with his picture on it with the caption “This is the white man who brought AIDS to Africa.”

AIDs in Africa is primarily spread by unprotected sexual promiscuity, but black Africans say that condoms are a plot by whites to stop blacks breeding, so they won’t use them. Real smart, huh? It is also spread by “injectionists” who use dirty needles when peddling snake oil remedies. One popular cure for AIDs in Africa is screwing virgins, and you wonder why I don't think that black Africans are real smart.

Are you considering blaming the white race for the recent earthquake in Japan as well?

diver dan,
I guess you are aware that the senior surgeon on the first fleet brought out vials of live smallpox. What is more interesting is that by that time ALL the British troops had been innoculated against smallpox using the smallpox itself. The cowpox vaccine came a little later.

Watkin Tench's journal of the first fleet make interesting reading but I do wonder why he made a real point about the live smallpox. Surely it was not released intentionally as a way of depopulating Australia like occurred in America?

Aka...

...The historical colonial position is to deny any implication in deliberate infection of Aboriginals with small pox. The implications of any act of deliberate intent would be considerable: But taking the conservative approach, contact with new settlers was very expensive in loss of life for Aboriginal tribes of Australia, and the “Devils playground” was to be their future lot, and remains so today, sadly.

I see that those two black hearted villains, Diver Dan and AKA, are trying to dream up another genocide conspiracy, this time implying that those dastardly English deliberately released smallpox to exterminate the aborigines. Well boys, it might work. After all the “stolen generations” BS grew like a fish story, and the people who dreamed up that Big Lie probably could not believe that they could get so much mileage out of it.

You could do the same with your new theory, this time calling it the “Infected Generations.” All you need if for some left wing “historians” to airbrush out the inconvenient facts so that history conforms to what the trendy lefties think that it should have been. But be careful, Keith Windshutte is still around, and I doubt if you will get away with it a second time.

I could not find any reference in Watkin Tench’s book about anybody importing smallpox, but I did read that the British Government was so concerned about plague breaking out in the new colony, that they screened every member of the first Fleet before embarkation.

When aborigines were found to be dying of plague, it caused extreme alarm in the colony. The colonists speculated that smallpox may be endemic to Australia, or that it had been inadvertently introduced by La Perouse’s crew.

Tench wrote that the colonists collected every sick aborigine and transported them to the Colonies hospital. You two should be able to dream up something apropriately sinister about that. Perhaps the British were sennding aborigines to hospital in order to harvest their organs for transplants?

Use your imaginations and don't let the facts get in the way of a good genocide theory. Amanda will be proud of you.

LEGO,
read Watkin Tench's journal perhaps the book was edited by Windschuttle!

Referring to Smallpox, Tench wrote:
"Did we give it birth here? No person among us had been afflicted with the disorder since we had quitted the Cape of Good Hope, seventeen months before. It is true, that our surgeons had brought out variolous [smallpox] matter in bottles; but to infer that it was produced from this cause were a supposition so wild as to be unworthy of consideration. (Tench, 1793, Ch 4)."

and

"An extraordinary calamity was now observed among the natives. Repeated accounts brought by our boats of finding bodies of the Indians in all the coves and inlets of the harbour, caused the gentlemen of our hospital to procure some of them for the purposes of examination and anatomy."
That is the bodies were taken back to be examined. Obviously the examiners were not frightened of contracting smallpox.

Intersting the way these things were documented so well, hey? More interesting is why Watkin mentioned it considering it seemed so unbelievable.