I have mixed feelings about this subject, given that I have felt similar to Ponder when camping and living in the Kimberley and the NT. there is definitely something amazing about camping under the stars in the outback.

However, after visiting and living in Ireland and England some years ago, I felt that I somehow 'belonged' there as well. The history of the places I went to was just so ancient, I was gob-smacked that my ancestors of many thousands of years ago stood on the same land as I did.

I feel privileged that as an Australian of 4 generations, originally from Irish/English ancestry, I feel as though I have connections to so many places!

ttbn What you said. After fifteen years in QLD it was so good to return home, WA. Not the towns or the people (changed for the worse) but the landscape, red dirt, amazing hills and even the spinifex. Despite the heat, dust and a million flies, I still feel at home and wish that Everyone would appreciate it and look after it.

I don't feel that the Aborigines have a superior connection
To Australia than I do.

I love the whole place, the cities, the outback, the beaches.

I was born here and I grew up in a fairly small town(at that stage)
The bush was all around us and as kids we would roam freely around

I know the feel and love of the bush and surrounding mountains and
The creeks and rivers.
I don't think there is any difference between my love of Australia and
The Aboriginals love of the same landscapes.

The aborigines may have had some knowledge of natural remedies but without the
Scientific medical knowledge of the British their ability to treat illness would have been as limited as the knowledge of proper medicine was to the White races in the early centuries.
The whites had their folk lore and old wives tales medicines too, in early English society
So this doesn't somehow make this kind of medicine a superior ability possessed by the aborigines. Even today it is folk lore that things like camomile tea is relaxing and all the other so called holistic herbs and potions sold without much evidence in white mans chemists all over the country.

I Do think the Aborigines probably did have
Knowledge of where to find edible plant foods in the bush.

My 11year old grandson came home from school, and said " Grandma, do you know we invaded this country."
I said, "well I'm part of that British Empire" (historically speaking) and I'm proud of it.
I said , we built this country into the wonderful country it is,
I thought the teachers had no right to make an 11year old boy ashamed of his British heritage.
So the Aborigines can put that in their reconciliation pipe and smoke it.

I agree with you to a certain extent Cherful.
One thing I would add is that these days, so many Aboriginal people have a mixed heritage also, and I often wonder why they don't also embrace that European part of their heritage also?

I feel almost as connected to my European heritage as I do to my Aussie one since I have been studying my ancestral roots for several years now.
The stories of my ancestors are fascinating to me.

Hi Suse,

I've been fascinated with family history for some time, but one thing I think I'm learning is that it is indeed a wise person who knows his own father, or his mother's or father's father. Fatherhood seems to be a flexible concept on Ancestry.com. I've followed a few wrong leads (I think) and 'discovered' all sorts of 'ancestors' who I have had to regretfully say goodbye to, once I realised that it may not have been so.

But the basic truth is that, if you are born and raised in a country, that is the only country you know, regardless of where your parents may have come from: they have 'other countries', you don't. Your early smells of your environment may stay with you, Cootamundra wattle, mallee, brigalow, sandstone, rain-forest, dairy farms, but after all, you can't smell what you've never been exposed to, so your senses won't leap to even your parents' early memory-smells, only your own. Or to the sounds of rosellas or lorikeets or whip-birds or crows (or those dopy chuckle-birds in Adelaide) that you may be used to. And those smells or sounds take you right back to your childhood, don't they ?

Don't get me started :)

Joe

Quite right Loudmouth. I too have found some naughty naval ancestors with families in different ports!
I do connect mostly with Australia of course, but I believe we are the sum total of all our ancestors....a sort of jumble of genes that affect every part of our bodies and lives.
I do love my genealogy.