Foxy,

Now you just sound like you have overdosed.

What alternative could possibly more significant than the day the
First Fleet Arrived in Sydney Cove ?
It was the biggest event in 65,000 years !

What can top that ? The day the first human stepped onto this continent ?
What day was that, or did he get back in his canoe and paddle back to PNG.
Who knows, the next known event of significance was the visits of the Dutch
ships to Western Australia, or visits to the North by traders from
Timor or of Capt Cook in the Endeavour.
All just passing by, but coming to stay and connecting the country to
to the rest of humankind, only the First Fleet !

shadowminister,

I'm not here to massage your ego or any other part of you.

Hi Bazz,

Of course, as might be expected, there are many who share
your opinion that Aboriginal people and their beliefs were
fairly naive and primitive and that it wasn't until the
arrival of white settlers that Aboriginql Australians began
to be civilised and adopt proper religions based on more
sophisticated concepts such as pregnant virgins and snakes
promoting fruit-based diets.

Nevertheless, even without all the benefits and technology and
diseases of European settlements, Australia's Indigenous people
lived fairly contented lives for many thousands of years,
having little contact with the rest of the world and therefore
missing out on much of the wars, genocide, and plagues that
makes history so much fun.

It can fairly be said that Aboriginal Australia had no idea
what it was missing. Some of the major events that the first
Australians never had a chance to enjoy include:

The hundred years war
The sack of Rome
The murder of Thomas Becket
The Black Death
The time Caligula made his horse a senator
Braveheart

So as you rightly point out it can fairly be said that though
the Aboriginal people may have believed themselves to be
having a pretty fun time, they were in danger of becoming
the wallflowers of the modern world, condemned to miss out
on the exciting adventures that the Native Americans had
been having since the white men arrived to give their
humdrum lives a bit of spice.

However, all that changed for them with the First Fleeters.

Today- they should celebrate that day - of course!

(Adapted - from Ben Pobjie's book - "Error Australis.")

Foxy,

Really pushing this noble savage schtick? There was no war between the 250 "nations" it was all hugs, kisses and kumbaya.

There was war and fighting and plenty of it. They might have missed the European wars, but they had plenty of their own.

"There was war and fighting and plenty of it." What, did you pop your head in sometime before 1788 and see all the wars, did you? Or is that what the far right rednecks like to believe. Aboriginals had well defined boundaries with a set of hard and fast protocols concerning intrusions within those boundaries,they may have avoided war, we don't know, so what would you know.