Loudmouth

'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.'

This is because family surnames pass down through the paternal line. Tracing the maternal and grandmaternal line is much harder, as I've found out to my infinite frustration in trying to trace my own family tree. I've been able to learn a great deal about my distant paternal ancestors, but much less about my distant maternal ancestors.

suse

I agree that the European connection is strong for many Australians. I travelled to Europe many times before I finally decided to move to the west coast of Ireland, where my paternal and maternal ancestors were born and raised.

I've never looked back.

There is something about the soft landscape, the muted light, the misty weather and the strong sense of historical social connection that I found missing in Australia.

Many Australians would disagree with me. That's fine. But I have learned enough about my paternal and maternal ancestors to know that they never wanted to leave Ireland, or their family or the Irish culture they had grown up with. It was the devastating politics of British imperial rule that made life impossible for them to remain in Ireland.

I now look at the masses of migrations and refugees that are now coming from the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan and I can't help but think of my own ancestors' situation many times over

"By Killarney's lakes and fells,
Emerald Isles and winding bays,
Mountain paths and woodland dells,
Mem'ry ever fondly strays;
Bounteous nature loves all lands;
Beauty wanders everywhere,
Footprints leaves on many strands,
But her home is surely there!"

I was hoping, in my search for genuine paternal ancestors, that at least one of them might have come from Kerry, by Killarney's lakes and fells: I even had a long story in my head, ready-made, about him getting the boat in Cork after a battle with English police. But no, only a maternal ancestor from Ireland :( - and from the North, Fermanagh, into the bargain. Bloody Ancestry.com.

My point about paternal ancestry is that, despite its being easier to trace one's ancestry through a paternal line because of surnames carried down, the chances of, let's say, 'mis-identification', is much higher on the paternal than the maternal side. Or maybe that's just MY ancestors.

For all that and all that, you can only be born in one place and those years between five and twelve are probably crucial in fixing landscapes and smells and sounds in your head for life. That goes as much for Indigenous as non-Indigenous native-born Australians.

In fact, up until maybe the 1920s, many whites born IN Australia proudly called themselves 'natives' or 'Australian natives' - they formed the Australian Natives' Association in 1871, to distinguish themselves from those 'blow-ins' from the Old Country. Aboriginal people were usually called 'Aboriginal natives' or 'Black natives' to distinguish THEM from the 'Australian natives', a description that many whites had put on their death certificates. The search for privilege takes many forms.

One day, DNA tests will be so cheap and quick that we will bypass Ancestry.com, but it still is great fun to concoct ancestries. Of course, mathematically, since on the whole, wealthier people had more kids, and very poor people often had none (or couldn't even get married), the chances of being descended (the operative word) from the aristocracy, or even royalty, is very high for all of us. I'm actually the rightful Earl of Tyrone.

Joe

Rob, you may choose to call yourself and most other Australians 'non-indigenous' but I do not like to use a word that describes me as a non-person. So I consider myself to be an exdigenous Australian, proud to have been born here and excited to look to the future more than to contemplate the past.

Having spent more than 30 years taking Australian & international groups into the outback & all of them attesting to its' "magnificence" and "spirit", it is clear to me how much it can differ from any pre-visit perceptions or tourism spin. How it is not boring & empty but full of colour, texture, living characters and creatures, enabling the mind to think clearly and expansively about life's reality, issues & possibilities.

Comments posted by anyone ridiculing or denying the outback or wilderness experience are invariably those of city centric deniers, still to discover their own life's inadequacies.
Yes, we are seriously disadvantaged by not knowing fully the wisdom of our First Peoples and what their connection to country represents. Our minds are too busy imposing rather than listening.

Our cities are becoming enclaves for "global citizens" who are recognising Australia simply as a place of seaboard beauty & opportunity, in whatever form, to them. So as we did to the First Peoples, are we now experiencing invasive change ourselves, slowly over time. Many social issues are now apparent to the discerning observer.

History shows our new arrivals once rolled up their sleeves and faced the challenges rather than entitlements, contributing magnificently to Australia, both in the city & the inland, as a visit to the inland will now confirm. Through their contribution they set down roots and became connected to country.

As a general observation, contemporary arrivals have split from their homeland roots and are here for the pickings, the comfort or retreat and a fast paced access to personal opportunities. This rootless generation now crowding the cities, disconnected from Australia's inland or nature, are in part now determining that Australia must change its attitudes, laws or culture to accommodate them. Strangely, reflecting on how our First Peoples might have been impacted or felt.

Arguably, until all new arrivals, welcome as they are, are assimilated to our wild country and the inland spirit of Australia; until they really experience the outback, will they truly be connected to country as this article "The wide brown land for me" is alluding to.

My first really solid memories are of hunting goats on Castle Hill, Townsville. A bunch of us 7 or 8 year olds did a lot of that, with our home made Lawyer cane bows, & straight stick arrows.

We never saw a goat, if there were any there, or much else, I guess we made so much noise the wallabies & goannas quietly avoided us. We did however absorb the wide vista offered, across the coastal plain, & out to Magnetic island.

Then as a teen in the Riverina I was used to thousands of acres of open grazing land, you could see for miles.

We do somehow absorb a feel for our place. In New Guinea, & the Islands, apart from at sea, or in a town, you could rarely see even a hundred yards. I found myself longing for an open paddock, just to look at.

I'm an Ozzie, 3Rd generation, but I doubt my forbears transmitted any sense of country to me at birth. I notice many people raised as city kids today, are often uncomfortable out here in the gentle tamed countryside, where their parents would have been quiet happy.

I also noticed many did not like the uninhabited areas of the Queensland coast. Some women particularly, would not go further ashore than a beach, they found the real bush very threatening.

I don't believe "country" gets into our DNA, but I'm sure where we are raised does get into our being, & becomes part of at least most of us.

I went to Uluru. It's a rock. The main thing that struck me about it was that it is not more "Aboriginal" than white, or for that matter indian. It is far older than human settlement on this continent. I get that Aboriginals like to make up stories about it - the desert is mostly pretty dull. But it is in no sense theirs - the found it already here, same as did white settlement.