Joe - Windschuttle - really? As Minotaur states Windschuttle has been well and truly discredited - he is a dinosaur relic of the past.

Well, there is nothing new happening on this thread, just the same old inward looking crowd intent on bullying any dissenters away so they can wallow in their smallminded creche.

It is such a pity really because this used to be a reasonable, if right-whinging, site.

Perhaps I will visit it again in a couple of years.

'It is such a pity really because this used to be a reasonable, if right-whinging, site.'

good on you Aka just join the self loathing/righteous left wingers who are more than happy to use mythology to verify their flawed narrative. You won't be helping the Indigeneous one little bit but its all about remaining the victim.

runner, your comment is exactly what I mean. Limited in intellect but full of small-minded snarking.
You haven't changed a bit over the years, you mind is firmly stuck in some self-righteous groove, incapable of discussing anything rationally.

It is kind of sad really - but I suppose y'all enjoy nattering amongst yourself about those 'do-gooders' (because you prefer do-badders perhaps?) and those 'lefties', with little need to question the extreme right swill you enjoy.

I must admit to being surprised that some of the old regular right-whingers are not on this thread - but I am not prepared to check this site further because it tends to make me feel a bit dirty for having visited it.

enjoy having your predujices confirmed Aka.

Minotaur,

Well, it's been ten years since I read Windschuttle's first volume. So just over three hundred people were killed in 31 years ? Roughly ten each year during those early years in Van Diemen's Land ? I would have thought more than ten convicts were flogged to death each year.

'Years of meticulous research' - are you suggesting evidence ? Of an exhaustive collection of reports and rumours, which would be admirable but not really evidence ?

'Coming to the conclusion that .... ' Evidence, please.

Maybe I should come to my senses, claim to have carried out many years of research and found that 56,500 Aboriginal people had been murdered across the North, or maybe just in Queensland alone. I would have been carried through the streets, and could dine out on that for years. Nobody would ask for any verification - too inconvenient.

Actually, if just a small random sample of rumoured massacre-sites were examined and evidence was found of massacres at each of them - not by other Aboriginal groups, but by whites - I would be happy to concede that someone was 'coming to a conclusion that .... ' and that their conclusion was very plausible. Otherwise, I'll wait for evidence.

Joe

Aka, it appears your comprehension skills are as weak as your spelling.

I never claimed the Tasmanian Aborigines were a happy people. On the contrary, their condition seemed miserable. They were a small population with an isolated gene pool, which limited resistance to disease. At some point diseases such as small pox were going to arrive on Tasmanian soil. Their isolation could not last forever.

Nor could the clash of cultures be avoided. This notion that Australia could have been set aside as some sort of 'racially pure' sanctuary for the Aborigines, untouched by modernity and the mass movement of outsides peoples and cultures, is fanciful. As I stated earlier, at some point foreign peoples were going to land on Australian soil. How would have the Aborigines fared under a different European power? What about under Chinese, Japanese or Indonesian rule?

What happened in Tasmania was ultimately a conflict over land. Dispirited, hampered by inferior technology and outnumbered, the Tasmanian Aborigines had little hope of keeping Tasmania for themselves. Violence was perpetrated by both sides. While tragic, such events are all too common in human history.