Perhaps 'founded' should be used instead of discovered.The nation of Australia was founded on an unnamed continent. We can name the person who was initially responsible for British occupation of this continent. Can the aboriginal industry name the aboriginal person they think 'discovered' the continent?

Britain was liberated by Emperor Claudius in 43 AD and the joyous tribes threw daisies at his statue made of British skulls and lime juice.

".. attempted extermination of often very warlike and incredibly easy to offend folk, who presented a very real threat! "

Japanese aircraft landed at Hughes and Strauss airfields Darwin 1942 and received Australian servants of the emperor who apologised on bended knee for the war and getting offended and making threats and stuff and here's some gold , bunyips and Captain Cook's sword and we're terribly sorry .

I had a phone call from an ABC journalist on Wednesday who was following the progress of an Aboriginal sea claim on a stretch of beach in my area.
She was unaware of the effects of the last mini ice age on sea levels.

Which coast line would be appropriate for a land claim I asked, (since Aboriginals are believed to have inhabited the continent for sixty thousand years), the current coastline which is ten thousand years old, or the original coastline which is now submerged in fifty feet of water, and lies one and a half kilometres out to sea?

Confusion.

Maybe this is the stuff Aboriginals should be researching and leave alone the distraction of dismantling monuments appropriate to white settlement.

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Dear Graham,

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You wrote :

« Certainly Cook didn't expect to find uninhabited lands … just that he was the first from the European world »
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Not so, Graham. According to his journal, Cook thought he was headed towards Van Diemen’s Land on leaving New Zealand. He knew that the Dutchman, Abel Tasman, had discovered both Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and New Zealand, sailing from west to east in 1642.

Cook probably also knew that another Dutchman, Willem Janszoon, was the first European to discover Australia in 1606. He set foot on land at the mouth of the Pennefather River near Weipa on the Cape York Peninsular and called the country “Nieu Zeland”, but the name was later abandoned and given to New Zealand.

Abel Tasman called Australia “New Holland” during his exploration of the north coast in 1644. The Englishman, William Dampier, referred to it as New Holland during his two voyages to Australia in 1688 and 1699.

Even Cook, himself, wrote in his journal before heading north from Botany Bay in 1770 :

« From what I have said of the Natives of New Holland, they may appear to some to be the most wretched People upon Earth but in realty they are far more happier than we Europeans being wholly unacquainted not only with the Superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquility which is not disturbed by the inequality of Condition. The Earth & Sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for Life »:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/empire/g1/cs4/g1cs4s3.htm

Cook’s reference to “New Holland” clearly indicates that he knew he was not “the first from the European world” to “discover” Australia.

Neither the Dutch nor Dampier "took possession" of the country.

Cook was the first European to "claim possession" of Australia despite the legitimate sovereign rights of “the Natives of New Holland” which he obviously chose to ignore, knowing full well that this was what the Admiralty and King George III expected of him.

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Thanks, Graham, for an even handed article.
It sets a good tone, but there are many aspects to be sorted out.
Allegations of genocide, and stolen children need to be examined, as does the “first people” assertion.
The first people were not aboriginal, but Chinese. Their skeletons were found at Lake Mungo, and excavated by the anthropologist, Alan Thorne..
“Thorne's discovery was based on DNA analysis of Mungo Man, the name given to a skeleton discovered near Lake Mungo in the eastern Australian state of New South Wales in 1974.
This revealed the species was about 60 000 years old and was, he claimed, descended from a Chinese race of homo sapiens which had arrived in Australia 10 000 years previously.
The race, called Graciles by the Australian researcher, had a specific gene that no longer exists in modern people, he discovered.
But according to Wu, the Graciles, whose existence had not been conclusively proved previously, could be descended from an African ancestor who migrated to southern China before reaching Australia 70 000 years ago.
http://www.news24.com/xArchive/Archive/Mungo-Man-raises-new-questions-20010115"
Banjo, what are the "sovereign rights" you assert. The aboriginals ha not claimed or taken possession of the land. They had no civilization or political organisation. They were nomads who wandered the continent in tribes.

19 February 1942 was the largest single victory ever mounted by a foreign power on Australia. On that day, 242 Japanese aircraft in the First Fleet discovered the town. A jade statue of Admiral Yamamoto stands in Darwin and is revered on Japan Day as the discovery of better railway building- skills for native Australians. With convict flogging and tribal scars a distant memory the people bow to zaibatsu, samurai and geishas with fluent Nihongo . "You're lucky we are not Spanish" the machine-gun police shout at the lucky students chanting kamikaze educational poems . In their dreams , the elder Australians believed in the Vietnam war and getting back Bondi beach but it was shipped to China by JOGMEC with 2,825,000 stock options at the exercise price of $0.79 per share.