Hi Paul,

A series of long bows ?

1. Did any passengers or crew or convicts pick up smallpox in South Africa ? Yes ? No ? Evidence ?

2. The Fleet took more than three months to travel from South Africa to Sydney. What's the incubation period for smallpox ? Longer than three months ? I don't think so.

3. On which ship did your hypothetical smallpox sufferer sail ? Did they pass the disease onto anybody else trapped with them on-board ?

4. How many of the 29 people who died (out of 1200 or so) died from smallpox ? None ? Entire ship-loads ? Evidence ?

5. How close do you think the Aboriginal people around Sydney got to the newly-arrived whites ? Immediately ? After a couple of weeks ? Within your hypothetical incubation period ? Evidence ?

Stick with the narrative, Paul, it's so much easier to blather rather than demonstrate.

Joe

OTB,

Regarding Utube and Wikipedia - as I stated earlier
it's all on the web. Google the information.
Most people do not rely on Utube or Wikipedia. They
do their research from various sources. Nobody is
disputing the unreliability of these two sources.

LOL, so sly.

This is what I posted,

<Check what this reliable academic and expert says about Wikipedia as a (dubious) source of information and a tool of astroturfing lobbyists for secondary gain of course.

"Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU
Posted by onthebeach, Sunday, 24 January 2016 2:43:52 PM>

Now, what criticisms can you level at the speaker and her facts?

OTB,

You're reading far too much into things.

Have a nice day.

Hi Joe,

You simply tried to convey the false impression that the first fleet took 8 months to “sail” to Australia, which suited your narrative. The sailing time allowing for stopovers was somewhat less.
"If there had been any outbreak on any of the ships, which there wasn't, it would have wiped out the ship's passengers well within eight months," I am surprised that the 5 weeks stopover in Cape Town, a somewhat significant event, was not included in your considerations,
You also stretched the 2 months from Cape Town to 3 months, late November to late January is 2 months.
I did not present as fact anything other than those known facts about the time taken. I used the words could have, which is not claim something as fact.
“suggests that an epidemic spread from the north and west, i.e. the Gulf of Carpentaria, down the inland rivers to the Darling and down the Murray”
Now that is a longbow indeed.

You said “So if epidemic spread from the north, they could have been brought to Australia, and maybe again and again over the previous centuries, by seamen from what is now Indonesia”

That is conjecture and you present no evidence

Stick with the narrative, Paul, it's so much easier to blather rather than demonstrate. Likewise Joe likewise.

Preventing Smallpox

By the early 1700s smallpox inoculation, known as variolation, had spread to parts of Africa, India and the Ottoman Empire. It was in the latter that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu encountered it in 1717, when she witnessed local peasant women performing inoculations at seasonal ‘smallpox parties’. On returning to Britain, she had her children inoculated during an outbreak in 1721.

By the 1790;s Smallpox was no longer the deadly diastase for Europeans it had once been, with many surviving, unlike naive populations such as Aboriginals where the death rate was between 50-70%.

Paul,

The First Fleet left England on 13 May 1787. It arrived in Australia 18 January 1788. Eight months.

Mid-October to end-January, Cape Colony to Sydney: three months. Your words.

For evidence of smallpox outbreaks spreading from the north, check out numerous articles by the historian Judy Campbell.

"Could have". Or not, Paul. Any evidence either way ?

Are you suggesting that inoculated whites, who still carried the disease, deliberately spread it amongst Aboriginal people who they associated with ? Evidence ? Or just more blather ?

Joe