Gee, of course convicts were not slaves. How did the landed gentry like John Macarthur manage to become so wealthy without paying wages? Why did Macarthur complain that successive Governors were taking too many convicts for public works, and not leaving enough for his enterprise. Shameful.
And the crimes committed, the major crime was the crime of being poor.

"they often were given 'grants' of land, a few of my ancestors included, cheap land which they had to pay off." And whose land was that? Aboriginal land, and how much did your ancestors pay the true owner for that cheap land? Not a penny.

On slavery in Australia;Townsville, the city was named after Sydney-based merchant and trader Robert Towns, who was essentially a slave-trader. He was a central figure in the “blackbird” trade, bringing South Sea Island adults and children to Australia as “indentured labourers” (that is, slaves) to Australia as agricultural labourers.

Towns was at it right up until the mid-1850s, two decades after slavery was abolished in the British Empire thanks to the efforts of the great English anti-slave campaigner William Wilberforce.

This, by any measure, was a bloke who trafficked in human misery for his own profit long after the rest of his own “civilised” peers had abandoned any attempt to defend slavery.

I see Joe, you slipped in your favourite hobbyhorse the Marxist. Can't talk about the rights of Aboriginal people without invoking that boogeyman Karl Marx!

Explain the Waterloo Creek massacre, your first attempt at denial was pathetic. Must do better.

BTW A good book for you Joe; 'The True Facts About WWII' by Hermann Göring, as told to Joseph Goebbels.

It is all very pointless.
History will mean that aborigines will fade away into the general population.
You can see it happening already.
Aborigines need to understand that the moment they got in a car, got
on a bus or a train or a plane, bought packaged food, used electricity
etc etc etc, they joined the rest of us on this planet.
They are no longer the people who were here in 1788.

Their previous isolation was nothing to be proud about.
Except up in the north, & WA they were unaware until Cook turned up
they thought they were the only people on the only land.
That was the equivalent of an alien spaceship landing in Farm Cove.

They had up to 60,000 years to make some progress but they did not
invent the wheel or produce metals or as is now the subject of argument
develop agriculture. As far as I know they did not produce textiles.

So really the arrival of the British snatched them into the modern world.
What are they complaining about ?

Dear Loudmouth2,

You write;

"Convicts weren't slaves. Thy had committed offences and were doing their time - definite time, seven or fourteen years, and then they were free. And while they were slaves, they often spent their off-hours living in the community like anybody else."

Very Trumpesque my friend.

Is it mandatory for anyone to celebrate anything? We have Reconciliation Week each year, sorry day, we had a National apology and we still have Australia hating activist who want to prevent Australian Africans, Australian Asians, Australian Indigenous, British Australians, Australian Arabs, Australian Jews etc etc etc celebrating how God has blessed this nation so richly. I say, grow up.

runner,

But we don't have a Beam Up Me Scotty Day.

So no, no slavery in Australia.
Loudmouth2,
That reminds when I spent a few days in the State Library & the Librarian showed me a ledger containing documents relating to a chap from New Caledonia in the 1890's who was deported eight (8) times from Queensland for being here without a work permit. When it came to the ninth time it was decided he deserved a permit & was allowed to stay.
I'd imagine his descendants are by now Indigenous.