Hi Joe and Issy,

your lines of argument are ridiculous.

Joe, your argument is the same as the car thief who pleads with the judge; "Yes your honour I stole the car, but the keys were in the ignition, it was asking to be stolen. Besides, I left the car on the side of the road, with only minor damage, if a bad car thief had stolen it, they would have burnt it out, I was doing the owner a service. GUILTY!

Issy, Australian POW's in WWII were well treated by their Japanese captors. The Japanese provided them with the benefits of food, shelter and protection from the war itself. Same as your argument. GUILTY!

I've heard that the guards in the Japanese POW camps were actually Korean.

Paul,

"Issy, Australian POW's in WWII were well treated by their Japanese captors. The Japanese provided them with the benefits of food, shelter and protection from the war itself. Same as your argument. GUILTY!"

You obviously know little about the treatment of PsOW by the Japanese, sure the majority of Japanese guards were brutal but I've known Australians who said that they owed their lives to Japanese guards who shared food and medicine with their prisoners,
suggest you read the book "Small Man of Nanataki". Liam Nolan. 1966.
Tells the story of a Japanese wh risked his life to provide help to Allied prisoners.

Surprised that you don't think that having electric lights is a great improvement that resulted from Britain legally taking over Australia.

Dear Is Mise,

I would normally just call you a pig ignorant fool because I have convinced myself that putting the effort in to educate you lot just isn't worth the effort.

But in these post Trump times where that brittle edge is starting to ease itself out of conversations I'm going to have a stab at it.

Let's start with one from your list of litanies against our indigenous brothers and sisters.

“Warm clothing for the colder months instead of untanned scratchy animal skins?”

The possum skin cloak utilised by the Aborigines of South East Australia was quite a prized garment. When an aboriginal child was born several skins were tied together and these were gradually added to as the child grew into adulthood. William Buckley's ended up being from around 100 skins. Carvings were etched into the skins which identified which tribe the owner was from but they also allowed the cloak to drape more freely.

In the early gold rush days they were extremely sought after by prospectors headed to the gold mines in Ballarat and Bendigo.

Here is a picture painted by the colonial artist Von Gerrand of one such exchange near Geelong.

http://www.geelonggallery.org.au/whats-on/exhibitions/scenic-victoria-land-sea-city/eugene-von-gu-rard-2299

Miners and others writing in this period have left glowing reports about the benefits of obtaining possum skin rugs from the Aboriginal people. As Annear describes it: ‘One rug imparted as much warmth as a dozen blankets and in summer they were stored until colder months returned.’[55] George Henry Wathen, a visitor on the Victorian goldfields, also extolled the virtues of possessing a possum rug and acknowledged, if grudgingly, that the settlers considered them to be undoubtedly the most highly valued inter-cultural trade item in Victoria:
“… l was soon asleep on the ground, by the fire, under an overbowering banksia, wrapped in the warm folds of my opossum rug. For a night bivouac, there is nothing comparable to the opossum-rug; and it is perhaps the only good thing the white man has borrowed from the blacks.”
http://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2005/dallong-possum-skin-rugs

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It turns out that possum fur is one of the few which is hollow which explains its extraordinary properties. It was even utilised in bomb sights during WW2 as it didn't freeze at altitude. Traditional worn with the fur on the inside but reversed when it rained it apparently offered extraordinary protection from the weather and cold nights.

Within 10 years the police magistrate in Geelong was bemoaning the fact that all the trees within a 20 mile radius of the town had been cleared and possum skins dramatically diminished as a result leaving the local tribe to rely on blankets and European clothes which were terrible in the cold and wet winter months and undoubtedly led to the high toll from respiratory diseases experienced but the locals.

An expedition bto Australia from an American crew led a cloak being taken back and preserved in the Smithsonian. It is one of only 3 left in the world. Here is some pictures of it: http://collections.si.edu/search/detail/edanmdm:nmnhanthropology_8470030?q=record_ID%3Anmnhanthropology_8470030&record=1&hlterm=record_ID%3Anmnhanthropology_8470030:

I don't think anyone is too old to learn new things and I hope I'm still capable of it. It often means parking ones ideology to do so I'm going to leave it up to you on this occasion.

Steele,

"Let's start with one from your list of litanies against our indigenous brothers and sisters."

What list?

Perhaps you mean the benefits that I listed?

The possum skin was, as you said, an Eastern Australia garment, the rest of the continent used mainly macropod skins.

Perhaps you can find where there are a few examples of these?

There are, as you say, only a couple of examples of the Possum Skin cloaks left.

They were untanned and just didn't last.
Unfortunately, unlike the rest of the world, the locals never discovered the art of tanning and all that it required was the use of brains.