Excellent article. We have republished a book 'Cape York - the Savage Frontier' which documents the history of Cape York since European settlement. In that location, mainland Aboriginal tribes fought mainland tribes to the death, and Torres Strait Islanders fought mainlanders, and New Guinea tribes similarly fought. This of course challenges the concept of Native Title (there was no such thing before the concept was introduced by English-speaking lawyers), and the author was subjected to hate mail as his honest history challenged the myths of Arcadian Bliss and the Noble Savage. An ancient Arab Proverb states 'He who speaks the truth must also own a fast horse'. But eventually truth will emerge and maybe we can recognise that everyone who lives today should be thankful to our forebears whoever they were (a wonderful amalgam of good and bad), stop living in the past, work towards a better future, and change our national anthem to something even our sportsmen and women can sing 'We're here because we're here because we're here, because we're here ...' repeated as the mood dictates.

This is a fascinating and timely article, the gist of which ought to be self-evident - that ancient Australia was visited, and perhaps partly settled, by many people from other regions over the past ten thousand years or so. For example,

* For forty out of the past fifty thousand years, Australia and Papua-New Guinea were one continuous land-mass. Perhaps the Torres Strait was still barely navigable only four or five thousand years ago - early seamen would have been nagivating a huge Arafuran bay. Note also:

- the sugar plant was developed by hybridising two grasses, one from New Guinea, the other from Sri Lanka,thanks to Austronesian seamen;

* Austronesian sailors, from the coastal areas of south-east Asia, have been cruising around the coast-lines across our region - from southern China throughout the island countries, to the coasts of India - for thousands of years. Over gthe past two thousadn years, they colonised the Pacific, reaching New Zealand around seven hundred years ago. After all, as we know, they were trading with Aboriginal groups, in trepang and sandalwood, for perhaps the last thousand years, from Macassar and Java and Timor.

* Chinese pottery and coins have been found along the north coast of Australia, dating back more than a thousand years.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that people have been bumping up against Australia for perhaps thousands of years. Those visits and colonisations may not continue in folk memory, but they may very well have left more intimate evidence in the ancestries of northern Aboriginal people.

Yes, perhaps Papua-New-Guineans, Macassarese, Timorese, Indians and Sri Lankans are the brothers and sisters - or at least the distant cousins - of many Aboriginal people today. Let's celebrate our diversity !

This may be a coincidence but in the 1970's a friend of my father was living up at Tennant Creek, we went on a driving holiday to the "Red Centre" and stopped to spend a few days with him on the way to Darwin.
As a treat he'd hired a very elderly Aboriginal couple he knew to guide us around the local area, show us the bush tucker and the wildlife etc.
Anyway there was a Men's site which we had to skirt around because we didn't have permission to go there, the explanation given was that this old guy wasn't allowed in there because even though he was a local he was thought to be part Indonesian and therefore not accepted by the other elders.
Now this guy was around 80 years old so he was at most one generation away from tribal, his wife even had part of her finger missing from a mourning ceremony, as I said it might be just a coincidence but it makes you think.

I agree with Loudmouth for once.Celebrate our diversity and have a unified nation.

The West has committed a lot of atrocities.I think the rise the BRICS Nations which includes India is a good foil to the unfetted aggression shown by NATO at the moment.We need a balance of powers and not this UN inspired one world Govt.

These type of discoveries are highly offensive to the aboriginal community and therefore will be illegal under Ms Roxon's new 'free speech' regime. And a good thing too....how dare mere facts get in the way of what we want to be true.

Yes, mhaze, I wonder how soon we will get to the point where truth is an offense ?

As I was reading somewhere today, an old Arab proverb observes that if you want to adhere to the truth, you need a fast horse.

Truth and reality - as objectively assessed in a Popperian sense - are full of surprises, and tend to beat manufactured stories, finely crafted and varnished as they may be, hands down.

Thank you, Binoy.