Greg Sheridan would celebrate the day we all became Japanese citizens with their 18 inch naval guns the largest fitted to ships.

Probably boats arrived before Cook as people in Botany Bay canoes ignored the British ships. Also at Ballina up the coast:
" Sir Joseph Banks also noted these people and remarked that they completely ignored the presence of the HMS Endeavour. This would seem to indicate that the HMS Endeavour was not the first ship that they had seen (Richmond River Historical Society {RRHS}, 1997)."

Imports of grass-harvest knives from China carried high tariffs as the local juan-knives with flint blades embedded in bees wax were preferred to cheap plastic . Chinese convict ships were ignored.

Hi Foxy, I picked that from the start.

When I visited Bishops Museum in Honolulu I learned that at one time Samoa controlled Hawaii, I don't know how, that is a distance of 4,000 km, the two languages are very similar. The Samoans are recognized as the greatest seafarers of the Pacific. Thor Heyerdahl proved with his Kon-Tiki expedition that it was possible for a raft to sail a great distance across the Pacific. How did people navigate without a compass, they used the sun and the stars, winds, cloud formations, birds and even smoke can indicate land. "T" could understand a few Hawaiian words in her own language. hard to find someone who speaks Hawaiian. Muttonbird, to this day is still prized by Maori, something you have to go far afield to find. I don't think the Samoans and others, would have had a great problem reaching Australia.

Small world Joe, on Australia Day at Yarra we were talking to an older lady, sort of relative, "T" and her are grandmothers to the two same children. She is from all places Aitutaki Cook Islands, she has got a house there (cyclone damaged) but lives in NZ. tried to talk us into making a trip back home, to help fix up the place, so she can return there permanently, will pay us in land and we could live there, nah. The block house is okay, with a new roof, but the windows need doing. A family reunion is planned there for the end of 2018. Aututaki is 30 mins flying time from Rarotonga, so it is rather remote.

Hi Joe, not all British were equal partners in the takeover of Australia 26th January 1788, far from it, the majority, the convicts and to a lesser extent, the soldiers, on that day, had little or no say in the matter, nor did many who followed them. They were in no better state than the Aboriginals. The people mostly responsible never came within 10,000 miles of the place. The one we hold up as the Father of Australia, Arthur Phillip, went back home a few years later, never to return. Given a free choice 99% of those who arrived in 1788 would have shot back to England faster than you can say didgeridoo.

This article, just one of many on the same subject of Greens splits and use of Australia Day for stirs for media attention, makes it obvious why some senior Greens should drop the green mask and the hypocrisy that goes with it.

http://tinyurl.com/greensplits

", not all British were equal partners in the takeover of Australia".
In he first federal election 26 january 1789 there was a 96% vote to stop being a convict and only 3% Greens in favour , 1% donkey vote or don't know.

Hi Nick,

Given the recent claim of Aboriginal people harvesting kangaroo grass seed, your observation that "Imports of grass-harvest knives from China carried high tariffs as the local juan-knives with flint blades embedded in bees wax were preferred to cheap plastic ...." is intriguing.

In his fascinating book, 'First Farmers', (highly recommended), Peter Bellwood suggests that

" .... any idea that mobile hunters and gatherers can just shift in and out of an agricultural (or pastoral) dependent [his emphasis] lifestyle at will seems unrealistic in terms of the major scheduling shifts required by the annual calendars of resource availability, movement, and activity associated with the two basic modes of production...." (p. 26)

and

".... Cape York Aborigines were in contact with Torres Strait and southern New Guinea gardeners, all living within a zone of similar ecology, climate, and floral resources ... Indeed, the crops that supported New Guinea cultivators - yams, aroids (particularly taro), arrowroot, palms, pandanus, and occasional coconuts - grew wild in the Cape York landscape without evincing any agricultural interest. (p.35)

and concludes that

"Nowhere in the ethnographic record do we observe any adoption of agriculture [by hunter-gatherers] that has imparted expansionary access to the adopting population." (p.37)

Of course, if archaeologists find cultivating and harvesting tools in great numbers, and fence-lines, and storage pits or sheds - and therefore settled villages, somewhere, then you might be onto something. But it's intriguing that, even now, in remote communities with running water, vegetable gardens are very rare.

Conversely, in the south, in the nineteenth century, the Ngarrindjeri men who took out leases of land were almost invariably of mixed ancestry, usually with childhoods in non-Aboriginal settings, foundlings raised on local farms, or raised on Kangaroo Island, coming 'back' into the group as adolescents or adults.

Question: did that slow take-up of innovative production techniques mean that people have always been 'behind the play' ?

Cheers,

Joe