Its not an Australia Day award (at least not in the way that's ordinarily understood), its an award given out on Australia Day.

Its given out by a group in the UK which has minimal if any links to the Australian government. http://australiaday.co.uk/about
Its only available to people who live in the UK and have some link to Australia.
It doesn't have any official status - no keys to the city or letters after your name or whatever baubles official winners get.

Its purpose seems obscure other than a reason to have a piss-up.

Oh, and to give people who are perpetually aggrieved reason to be....aggrieved.

So don't get your nickers in a not SR. Its not a rooly-trooly award - more along the lines of your participation award for the 4th grade 100 meters event.

BTW, another winner of these non-awards was Sam Kerr. I'm not sure if she got it for kicking a ball straight or her back-flips - an attribute which will stand her in good stead if she follows Nova Perris into politics post athletic career.

Dear Is Mise,

What do you mean they didn't last? They lasted a lifetime. The owner was generally buried in them. You can see with the Smithsonian example where the first four skins were sewn together for the newborn and subsequently added to.

How much of our clothing do we throw away over our lifetimes?

The tanneries that were established in our region stripped the land of native trees and severely polluted the rivers making them unfit for human consumption. Yet Aborigines were able to have their garments remain functional for life.

Listen mate, there is nothing wrong with being able to say 'Well thanks for that, it was something I didn't know and it has given me something to think about' rather than automatically doubling down with the contrariness.

If people claiming to be descendants of Aboriginals were really our "brothers and sisters", we could all get in on the rorts. The activists, black and white, with lies and demands for separate 'voices' and deals, have ensured that there will never be a close relationship between black and white in Australia.

Hi Paul,

So you're asserting that the continent of Australia could have been untouched by any would-be colonial power forever ? Certainly up to 2021 ? That the French, Spanish, Dutch, Russians, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, etc. would have left it alone - and would still be doing so now, if it hadn't been already seized by the British ?

Improper, sure. Unfair ? Of course. Unjust ? Yes. Inevitable ? Yes. Unavoidable ? Yes. Sometimes - perhaps often - in history, evil and misfortune prevail, it's not always 'Click your shoes, Dorothy'.

Mind you, Marx would have concurred, I think: he thought that British imperialism was a godsend for India.

Sorry, I don't understand your analogy with car-thieving :(

Joe

Steele,

Where are the examples that were obtained by Europeans for their own use?
They didn't last because they were not tanned and as I said before, after a supposed time of 60,000 years one would think that the locals would have used brains instead of raw skins.

As you are undoubtedly also eager to learn.

"litany of lists" is not good usage because it means 'list of lists', roughly, although one understands the sometimes irresistible urge to be alliterative.

How about addressing some of the other points that I raised?

Like the undoubted benefits of electric light.

I wonder if the Left have given up on asserting that Aboriginal people here have been farmers for 127,000 years, as promulgated by Professor Pascoe of Melbourne University. Keep at it !

On that basis, it is clear that possum-skin cloaks were a myth, with staged photos later in the nineteenth century. Clearly, with 127,000 years of agricultural history behind them, Aboriginal people would have developed techniques - similar to Maori - for

* processing flax into cloth. In fact, they would have had time to modify flax for toughness and softness of fibre, and select the most suitable varieties and plant vast crops of it across Australia; of course, Europeans stole all of that cloth and either burnt it or sent it back to Britain, bastards;

* like most agricultural people, they would have developed pastoralist interests, in corralling and raising the most suitable animals for their fibre over 127,000 years, as we have done with sheep and goats over the past 5,000. I recall a story about the last Woolly Wombat, from up around Gulgong I think - evidence that, at one time, Aboriginal groups, perhaps all over the east, domesticated and bred wombats for their long fibres: from memory, that Gulgong Wombat was just like a huge ball of fur and its coat was trimmed twice each year, it had been bred for its fur to grow fast.

So they wouldn't have had to rely on possum-skins, if they grew their own fibre crops. There could have been up to three different strains of cotton growing around FN Queensland and one in SW WA, all carefully bred over 127,000 years by different clans. Much was woven into sails for their ocean-going ships which, we know now, traded all over the Pacific and what is now south-east Asia. An Aboriginal three-master traded regularly between ports on the Red Sea and what is now Geraldton.

Don't fall for every con-job that you come across. A lot of it is 'make it up as you go' by Johnny-come-latelies. Possum-skins ! Ptuh !

Making stuff up can be great fun!

Joe