Thank you, Mr O. :)

mhaze,

The Aboriginals were lucky it was the "Poms?"

Not many would agree!

Foxy,

Since 'invasion' or settlement would have been inevitable, which imperialist power do you think might have done a better job here ?

The Spanish ? Perhaps not, they still had slavery in their colonies until 1898 or so. And not such a great record in the Americas for four hundred years. And in the Philippines.

The French ? Perhaps, but even the French Revolutionaries fought against the slaves in Hispaniola for ten years, to keep them in slavery. It seems fraternity only goes so far, let alone equality.

The Russians ? The Japanese ? The Dutch ? The Yanks ? Even if they had all left Australia alone for another two hundred years, how do you think the Indigenous people here would go up against the Chinese ? Or the Indians ? Or the Indonesians ?

History is a miserable bastard, but it rolls on.

Joe

Joe,

And you're not a Brit?

Well like Andrew Bolt and mhaze, you certainly rise
to the occasion.

Still, as Randy McDonald, writing in Quora (June 17,
2017) points out so eloquently:

British colonisation was not good for the people who were
already living in Australia at the time of the First Fleet.

The Aboriginal population living in Australia at the time,
communities with tens of thousands of years in history
in their continent were devastated by the impact of
British settler colonialism, the effects of disease and
displacement being compounded by the effect of armed
conquest and an active effort to break down Aboriginal
cultures.

Some estimates make it entirely possible that even now,
after accelerating population growth in Aboriginal
populations over the 20th century and into the present,
there might still be fewer Aboriginals alive now than
before the First Fleet's arrival. From their perspective
British colonisation was an outstandingly negative
experience with irreparable effects.

The vast majority of Australia's population is not
descended from the Aboriginal population of the continent.
From the perspective of the non-Aboriginal majority, things
are fine.

From the perspective of the Aboriginal minority, things are
never going to be fine again.

Any evaluation of the British colonial experience in
Australia has to take these two perspectives into account.

Not many would agree!
Foxy,
Yes, I know those types only too well.

Foxy,
what's wrong with you?
Your stance is just nonsensical, what do you want?
What do you expect US to do about, what exactly?
Why do you push this relentless, unproductive agenda?
If you think we (Aussies) are going to give another inch to the blacks, just because bleeding hearts like yourself say so, you're delusional and misguided.
When will you get it into your stubborn head that we are here now and we don't owe anyone anything, so stop pushing this guilt trip and continual virtue shaming.
Call it an invasion, call it squatting, call it what you like, myself and 25 odd million people, don't care about the plight of a very confused and egregiously demanding few people, when they do nothing but continually make demands and unfounded claims to justify their demands.
As I said before, we don't need records to tell us the blacks were not some advanced techno culture, well ahead of the rest of the world, because there is no evidence to suggest they were/are.
As for the number of REAL a borigines, the notion that their number could or would have returned to pre-settlement numbers is ridiculous.
From the moment of settlement the blacks were reduced to a minimum, and then because of intermarriage, as time went on, those who married or lived together, any offspring would have been half castes, so that put an end to that line of blacks.
In time the blacks and whites have coupled up to the point that we now have a generation of Australian blacks or half castes.
So the lineage of true a borigines, ended some years ago, unlike the misnomer that there are hundreds of thousands of blacks and that tens of thousands are going to uni.
The true description if basing on colour is they are GREY.
Now that best describes them, as they are neither black nor white.
So yes indeed the number of grey Aussies has increased.
The number of blacks has decreased dramatically and I would guess now total less than a few thousand, with less than 100 at uni.