pmac, I'm not sure what your definition of "culture" is - you seem to mean "holidays" or "festivals". Culture is a lot more than just celebrating a religious festival.

When I was referring to "culture", I wasn't talking about history at all, except insofar as our history has a direct bearing on the culture that we have inherited and grown. By "culture", I meant everything from literature, art, music and mythology to ways of thinking and speaking. Everything from Shakespeare and the King James Bible, to Henry Lawson, the Lindsays, Kenneth Slessor, Sydney Nolan, Tim Winton, Brett Whiteley, Lloyd Rees, Errol Flynn, Howard Florey, Mary Gilmore, Peter Weir, George Miller, Paul Kelly, Nick Cave, Mick Thomas, David Oliphaunt, Noel Counihan ... I could go on.

"the total lack of any significant or meaningful cultural activities for 'white' Australians"

You really need to get out more and shrug off your inferiority complex. If Australia Day is the only Australian cultural activity you can think off, then you have a very blinkered idea of Australian culture.

Oh my bleeding heart .. your self loathing is embarassing.

My family came to Australia and assimilated, now we call ourselves Australians.

The aboriginals of this continent are racist and cannot get over the fact they were primitive people in a world of colonisation during the 18th century, so were many people who mostly move on.

As long as they cling to ancient hatreds and struggle with their own lives they will be on the fringes of society. They are falsely coached to believe they are some sort of mystical super class of eco genius - their own lifestyles betray them. It's just fantasy.

I wish it were better for them, sure, most of us do - but this holier than everyone else tripe does not help them nor does it endear them to the majority of Australians. People who get on with their lives and pay taxes that are then used endlessly to sooth and comfort and basically train the aboriginals that they should continue doing what they do to get more of the same.

Acceptance cuts two ways, seems we accept them, but they are encouraged not to accept us - have they accepted PM Rudd's apology yet?

The American aboriginals who yearn for days of old are similarly marginalised in their own country and like here, will die out living their last days as angry men and women, for what?

People may well have lived here for at least 40 000 years but it is unclear what relationship the earliest Australians had with the Aborigines who were here in 1788.

What is the source of the Aboriginal proverb?
"We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love ... and then we return home."

The pre-contact culture of the aborigines may or may not have been brutal or completely awful.

But what was life like for the masses in "civilized" Europe. Europe was essentially a pooh-hole (its cities were stinking pooh holes) with a history of never-ending wars and religious persecution.

If life was so superior in Europe, then why did millions take the first opportunity that they could to go elsewhere, away from their stinking country and its stinking cities.

Plus Europe only became economically wealthy by the wholesale exploitation of most of the rest of the world.

Imperialism and colonialism.

Rule britannia, rule britannia, britannia rules the waves, pommys never ever shall be slaves.

But of course they enslaved and exploited everyone else, and stole their wealth.

Ho Hum,

Did your mother not like you or something? - You need to take an anger management course.