Foxy,
You must have gone to a funny school, when I went to school we discussed Australian history and the real treatment of Aboriginal Australians wasn’t hidden and in World History we were taught that the British did a lot of good, sometimes unintentionally but mostly with the good of the locals at heart.
You mentioned that they brought trains and cricket to India; why did you not mention that they brought law to protect the ordinary people?
Nor did you mention that they brought an end to wifely immolation on their husbands’ funeral pyres, must have slipped your memory.
No mention either of the stopping of Thugee, the murder of innocent people as sacrifices to the goddess Kali, or their support for the right of widows to remarry and many other issues, one of which springs to mind, land tenure.

What an invasion it was, the ‘Invaders’ came ashore unopposed and no more than a few dozen of the Home Side even knew about it..
It probably took 100 years or so for all the locals to hear about the ‘invasion’

Invasion Day, an invention that grew out of the knowledge imparted by the ‘Invaders’ who also had to give the locals the idea of a flag before they could invent one of their own.

When these 'invaders' tried to contact the natives, they ran away.

The 'invaders', armed with smooth bore muskets which, after being fired, were no better than clubs (plus a bayonet) for the 15 to 30 seconds it took to reload them.

The 'invaders' were outnumbered, and the locals could have massed against them, with spears - from a distance while muskets were being re-loaded, then with at least an equal chance at close quarters.

It would not have taken long to gauge the limitations of the 'invaders'.

How long do people think this country should have been allowed to go to waste before civilisation caught up with it?

Hey ttbn,
"How long do people think this country should have been allowed to go to waste before civilisation caught up with it?"

When you say 'people' you're obviously not including the 'indigenous' themselves, right?

'Country' assumes a related people that belong to it.
If it was a country before colonisation, then it was 'Aboriginals country', right?

'allowed'
- Does this not infer some existing 'right to' or 'ownership of' by the 'invading force'?
Russia then has much more existing 'right to' or 'ownership of' Ukraine than the English had of this continent, right?

And why do you assume it was 'going to waste'?
Maybe they kept this place in pristine condition for thousands of years and didn't waste it at all?
They haven't ravaged the land like we have over the last 230 years.
No plastic / landfill or agricultural chemicals and effluent pumped into the sea before 1788 right?

We constantly hear about what we're doing wrong regards the environment,
Maybe those who didn't do those things were actually doing 'something' right?

Civilisation?
Penal Colony.
English exploited this land in the fear that if they DID NOT others like the Dutch or French or whoever would.
Your argument today is virtually the same as the English had then, before they even set foot in the place.

- Whilst the argument is realistically valid it's no more morally right now than it was then.

If you think Russia is wrong to 'invade' Ukraine, then why flip the script when it involves ours invading someone other inhabitants country?
- Or aren't they even 'people'?

Do the arguments not apply when given in relation to our own behavior, or does criticism only exist when others do it?
'Do as I say, not as I do'.

And by civilisation, don't you actually mean 'conquered and exploited by foreigners'?

How long do 'non-aboriginals or colonists' think this 'continent' should have been (remove allowed) 'inhabited by its existing long-term inhabitants' before being 'conquered and exploited by foreigners'?

Your agrument therefore is actually a statement:
'It was ripe for conquest'.

Hmm...
Could it actually be that Russia has more right to Ukraine
- than Australians (as colonists) have to Australia
Or Americans (as colonists) have to America?

How stupid is this world?
I might be on to something here.
Are we all invaders?
Maybe the indigenous are invaders too?

My Scottish forefather was sent here for stealing a sheep.
Am I an invader?
Did I colonise this continent or am I too just the relative of a conquered nation and convict?

Maybe some people think the English made a mistake by not wiping them out instead of using them as a source of labour when it suited them?

The aboriginals & mix raced of today should give thanks every day that the British came. If they hadn't it would have been some one else & most definitely less kind.

All the British did was what successive waves of dark folk had done for centuries, move in from abroad & take over what the previous wave claimed. This is the history of the world, everywhere, not just Australia.

Todays aboriginals would have still been living in bark humpies with a life expectancy of not much over 30 years if a male, & somewhat less if female, if Europeans had not arrived to modernise their lives.