Hi Joe, there is no doubt you have done a painstaking job of faithfully and accurately reproducing much of the white mans material as it relates to European contact with Indigenous Australia over a long period. Is there anything from the Aboriginal perspective in all this. One thing I believe is the Europeans who wrote those reports and conducted those inquiries all had one thing in common, they looked upon Aboriginal people from a purely European perspective. Don't get me wrong, I believe many Europeans wanted the best of outcomes for those they perceived as a "simple stone age people", but they always wanted it in European terms, how best to get these people to somehow assimilate into our modern European world. The fact that there was so many reports from individuals, boards, commissions etc highlights the fact that the treatment of Aboriginals by the white man in their forced assimilation was not always done with the best of intentions, and not always with the best of outcomes.

There is now an opinion that there is much more to be learnt about Aboriginal society as it existed before colonisation than one can get from the orthodox European accounts of the nineteenth, and most of the twentieth centuries. Individuals like Bruce Pascoe are now presenting controversial material that has always been there, but never got the recognition it deserved. Material that helps to tell the full Aboriginal story, not just that part, that was put forward and accepted by many of the orthodox thinkers of the last 230 years.

Reference old buildings:

"Göbekli Tepe (Turkish: [ɟœbecˈli teˈpe],[1] Turkish for "Potbelly Hill")[2] is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey approximately 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa. The tell has a height of 15 m (49 ft) and is about 300 m (980 ft) in diameter.[3] It is approximately 760 m (2,490 ft) above sea level.

The tell includes two phases of use, believed to be of a social or ritual nature by site discoverer and excavator Klaus Schmidt, dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE.[4] During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected – the world's oldest known megalith"

That's 10 to 12 thousand years old, about twice the age of the eel traps.

I still wonder why the OP didn't mention really old man-made structures.

"Older than the pyramids, the Acropolis, Stonehenge -
Budj Bim has been added to the World Heritage List."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

ALTRAV,

Records do exist
in all the State Libraries, in Museums, National
Galleries and on various sites around the country.
All you have to do is visit some of these places and your
knowledge will be broadened.

Just because you claim
that you don't know something does not mean that it
does not exist. All you have to do is acquire the
knowledge and you will know.

Joe,

You protest too much, methinks.

As Associate Professor Robert Foster said -
You oversimplify the main crucial complexities.
And yes it does depend on how you spin things.

You like Keith Windschuttle imagine conspiracy where
there is none. Coming from the hard left you like
Windschuttle switched to the hard right when it was
opportune to do so. Windschuttle's paranoid style is
understandable. He's had to earn his stripes since
swapping sides and, like all apostates, his ideological
argument is more extreme than his more established
counterparts.

His objections are out of touch. As are yours.
As for kissing your butt? In your dreams pal!

Foxy,

Written like a good comrade ! isn't Google handy for finding great slabs of other people's words ?

Well, we'll see, won't we ? What's the bet that the demands don't stop, no matter how absurd and impossible they get ?

My generous offer still stands ....

"Just because you claim
that you don't know something does not mean that it
does not exist. All you have to do is acquire the
knowledge and you will know."

Like really old man-made structures.