Dear Joe,

Zionism means a return of Jews to the land where their ancestors lived. I was just extending that idea to the whole human race.

Paul,

"Cook had a vested interest in seeing events of that day portray himself, and his expedition, in the best of light."

Indeed he did, being a perceptive person he thought to himself,
"Must make this look good because 250 years from now someone will analyze my words and might possibly draw the wrong conclusion and I won't mention that it is better to be upwind of the locals at all times if possible".

"The "Gweagal Shield" recovered by the Europeans and now in the British Museum with a bullet hole in it adds weight to the Aboriginal account."

The shield in the British Museum has nothing to do with the events in Botany Bay. Its made of redwood which was unknown to the Sydney natives. Cook specifically says the one he took was made of bark - just like the stuff the technologically backward natives had been using for 'think-of-a-number-and-double-it' years.

Aren't we sick of all this yet. It happened. It was neither moral nor immoral. If it wasn't Cook it would have been someone else. If the British didn't come, it would have been someone else. The aboriginals were lucky it was Cook and the British. People as backward as the aboriginals were always going to be overrun by more advanced civilisations, just as the earlier Australian natives had been overrun by newer arrivals in the dim past.

I had to laugh at a report on the ABC today. They are apparently going to find out how the natives felt about Cook's arrival by asking their descendants to give an opinion. Apparently people born 20 years ago know exactly what people born 270 years ago thought. Truly, the age of enlightenment is over...at least for some.

I have Celtic blood in me. I can't wait for these moronic 'historians' to ask me to tell them how my ancestors felt about Caesar's invasion of Britain.

FFS.

"Zionism means a return of Jews to the land where their ancestors lived. I was just extending that idea to the whole human race".

How on earth can Zionism be extended to the 'whole human race'?

Paul,

Well now, of course Blainey uses European accounts: from the diaries of people who were actually there, including Cook himself, Banks, etc. The natives at the time were not taking notes, and anything passed down from them would be fireside tales - unrecorded, and therefore 'iffy' at best.

Wasn't Captain Cook stabbed by Hawaiian Islanders and
part of his body cooked to enable the bones to be
removed?

An ignominious death.

Just goes to show you have to be careful when dealing
with natives I guess. The natives mistook Cook and
his sailors for gods when they landed in the Hawaiian
islands. When one of Cook's sailors died of a stroke
the natives realised the Europeans weren't immortals.
From then on relationships became strained.

Paul,

So what was the 'Great Lie' ? What did Cook lie about ? Of course he (and the Aboriginal people who he encountered) would have misunderstood each other - everybody did for perhaps 250 years afterwards - but 'lie' ?

Do you mean the term 'terra nullius' ? The first use of it in relation to Aboriginal people here was in 1939, by Phillip Jessup, an American professor writing to Ernest Scott (see: http://www.surplusvalue.org.au/Misc%20Articles%20and%20Poems/terra%20nullius%20copy.pdf on page 4.

Neither Cook nor Philip used the term - and, in fact, it has never meant that there was nobody here in Australia; everybody from Janszoon to Hartog and Tasman to Dampier to Nuyts etc. knew that there were people here and said so, often with irritation.

The term sometimes meant country without a definite system of land law or ownership, so no means of buying and selling; and/or a piece of land (the exemplar was Svalbard) with people but no real system of law or administration; and/or land like Antarctica with no people or law whatever.

So there were plenty of 'Great Misunderstandings' on both sides. Also 'Great Assertions'. So what do you mean by 'Great Lie' ?

Joe