nicknamenick states: "Aboriginals deserved what they got from the winners." And thus earns the title well.

Hi Minotaur,

I'm in South Australia, I have only the SA records to go on, and second-hand accounts in articles and books about the rest, with some first-hand anecdotal accounts as well.

So, in relation to driving people off their lands, there was one letter to the SA Protector reporting that a new pastoral lessee, John Lewis, was planning to drive people off his lease. The Protector promptly wrote to him, pointing out that he would be in breach of his lease conditions if he did. End of.

Yes, it probably happened elsewhere. The ration system tended to pull people out of remote corners of their country to congregate around the depots, from the earliest days. Perhaps that was one of its ulterior motives. But pastoral lessees needed labour, so were happy to set up ration depots, for free, in order to attract the young and able-bodied who couldn't get rations, but still had the right (and still do) to hunt, gather and fish.

In order 'to keep people in their districts', the SA Protector issued 15-ft boats, probably a hundred at any one time, particularly for people who couldn't work. Of course, fishing gear as well. Such people got their boats free, able-bodied people had to pay half the cost. Repairs were carried out on the same basis. Guns were also issued on the same principle, with repairs ditto.

To be honest, when I was typing up the nine thousand letters of the SA Protector (1839-1913), I kept asking myself if I would have done anything different: the answer was 'No'. They're on www.firstsources.info, so if you can find one letter which you disagree with, go for it.

And of course - since no Protectors were dismissed, one serving for thirty five years - they were carrying out the colonial government's policies. C. D. Rowley called South Australia "The Colony Which Was To Be Different", and so it seems. But I'm not so sure that after, say, 1850, NSW or Victoria policies were much different from SA's.

Joe

Hi again Minotaur,

Nicknicknick employs very deep satire and irony, I don't think he means to be racist.

One day, we will all have to grapple with the questions: "Was there really any alternative to the British declaring sovereignty over Australia ? Could Australia have been left alone forever ?"

What do you reckon ? The Brits beat the French by only a couple of weeks. Even the Americans were contemplating seizing parts of both New Zealand and Australia. In the 1850s, forts were built, even here in Adelaide, to defend the colonies from invasion by the Russian Imperial Navy. In time, the Dutch and Portuguese - and perhaps the Spanish - might have thought of invading an unclaimed Australia. Do you really think the Japanese would have left it alone after they defeated the Russian Navy in 1904 ? Would a resurgent China today knock back the opportunity to take over Australia ? India ? Indonesia ?

So let's be brutally honest: it had to happen. We can fart around and change words here and there, but the bottom line is that the British declared sovereignty over Australia. Nor can that be reversed. We can invent dreadful crimes perpetrated afterwards, but how does that change anything ?

We also have to ask: would Indigenous people be better off now if that hadn't happened ? Look around you: can you do without air-conditioning, a regular income, all manner of services, the chance to travel ? Would you rather not know about the world out there ? Well, with Trump and North Korea, yes, I can sympathise, but apart from those idiocies ?

So how can we change things for the better, for everybody who is now here, 24 million of us ? These questions will never go away.

Cheers,

Joe

yeah minotaur wot he said .

minotaur,

An impressive list of achievements that could apply to any number of peoples around the world at one time or another.

But let us take the boomerang first. Wikipedia has this to say:

"Though traditionally thought of as Australian, boomerangs have been found also in ancient Europe, Egypt, and North America. Hunting sticks discovered in Europe seem to have formed part of the Stone Age arsenal of weapons.[13] One boomerang that was discovered in Jaskinia Obłazowa in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland was made of mammoth's tusk and is believed, based on AMS dating of objects found with it, to be about 30,000 years old.[14][15] In the Netherlands, boomerangs have been found in Vlaardingen and Velsen from the first century BC. King Tutankhamun, the famous Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, who died over 3,300 years ago, owned a collection of boomerangs of both the straight flying (hunting) and returning variety"

Joe it really is great that you put all that effort in, so that we have some actual facts regarding Aboriginal treatment at least in SA. Facts sure trump emotive garbage.

Well done, & thanks.