The murder makes international news. ibid.
The defendants shock Australia with their callous attitude – laughing and sniggering in the dock. ibid.
Australia 1865: vast, empty, lonely – a land the size of Europe, a land where gold was to be found. Robbery Under Arms 1958 starring Peter Finch & Ronald Lewis & Jill Ireland & Laurence Naismith & David McCallum & Maureen Swanson & Vincent Ball et al, director Jack Lee
Darwin the northernmost city in Australia already bombed by the Japanese is now preparing for an invasion. The country’s first war. World War II: The Apocalypse: American Allies aka Apocalypse: The Second World War: World Ablaze, National Geographic 2009
In February 1942 Japanese bombers attacked the Australian mainland. The World at War: Pacific 23/26, ITV 1974
Sickness and disease were obstacles as formidable as Japanese bullets. By the end of 1942 the threat to Australia had been removed. ibid.
Tasmania – the empire’s first juvenile prison. By the end of the 19th century over 160,000 British convicts are deported to Australia. 15,000 are children under sixteen. The British VI: Tale of Two Cities, Sky Atlantic 2012
By the time of Mabo in 1992, terra nullius was the only explanation for the British settlement of Australia. Historians, more interested in politics than archives, misled the legal profession into believing that a phrase no one had heard of a few years before was the very basis of our statehood, and Reynolds’ version of our history, especially the Law of the Land, underpinned the Mabo judges’ decision-making. Michael Connor, The Bulletin 20th August 2003
If you could have visited Australia fifty thousand years ago there would have been big animals everywhere, but they would have been totally foreign and alien. Tim Flannery, South Australia Museum
An entire continent peopled by the lower orders. Mark Twain
A jewel set in Australia’s northern sea is Bathurst Island – it’s inhabited by a people whose instincts are not far removed from the lower animals. White missionaries have come among the coloured Aboriginals; they are doing noble work in saving the blacks from themselves. Pathé News
In Australia the state had recently begun a policy of removing so-called half-castes from their parents to imbue them with European values and ‘breed out their colour’. George Alagiah, Mixed Britannia 1/3 1910–1939, BBC 2011
After Tonga … Australia … every major city was included … Over eight weeks in Australia she took 33 flights … An estimated 75% of the Australian population turned out to see the Queen in 1954. George Alagiah: The Queen: Her Commonwealth, BBC 2018
Even as it [Great Britain] walked out on you and joined the Common Market, you were still looking for your MBEs and your knighthoods, and all the rest of the regalia that comes with it. You would take Australia right back down the time tunnel to the cultural cringe where you have always come from. Paul Keating, to meeting of Australian Conservative supporters of Great Britain 27th February 1992
The real game is the poverty-stricken situation of Aboriginal people. The lack of courage on the part of this government to say sorry. The determination of a part of minority section in Australian society to accept aboriginal people and the reality of history. That’s the real game. And the next part is to bloody well do something about it. Charles Perkins, Aboriginal leader
Australia Deaths In Custody: How Many More? Amnesty International report
A New Black Flash Is On His Way To England: Spotlight On Speed In Rugby League. News article by Jack Bentley, re Wally McArthur
Indisputably, in my view, ‘breeding out the colour’ was policy, in that it was a systematic course of action endorsed and pursued by those charged with authority over Aboriginal affairs. However, it was policy initiated not by parliament or minister but by senior members of the bureaucracy. Russell McGregor, Breed Out the Colour
Australia has a marvellous sky and air and blue clarity, and a hoary sort of land beneath it, like a Sleeping Princess on whom the dust of ages has settled. D H Lawrence, letter 20th May 1922
I think a lot of these kid believe that they’re going to be around to watch who comes to the funeral and who gives them respect or lives them a sense of care and a sense of love which many of them feel they don’t have – that’s a terrible reason to commit suicide. So, my life for a moment of respect. It’s a hell of a bargain. Professor Colin Tatz, director Genocide Studies Centre, Macquarie University
It is true that diseases introduced by convicts and settlers – smallpox, typhoid, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, influenza, pneumonia, measles and venereal disease – seriously depleted Aboriginal numbers. But it is to the genocidal impulses and actions of the settlers that we must turn for evidence of Australia’s treatment of the Aboriginal peoples ...
We know something about the physical killings, particularly in the latter half of the last and the early part of this century. The first white settlers came to Tasmania in 1803, and by 1806 the serious killing began. In retaliation for the spearing of livestock, Aboriginal children were abducted for use in forced labour, women were raped and tortured and given poisoned flour, and the men were shot. They were systematically disposed of in ones, twos and threes, or in dozens, rather than in one systematic massacre. Professor Colin Tatz, Genocide in Australia AIATSIS Research Discussion Paper 8
An estimated 90% of the Aboriginal people live below the poverty line, and suffer a life-span twenty years shorter than white Australians ... The police and the judiciary are the enforcers of a one-sided white law. Anti-Slavery Society, ‘Aborigines Today’ report to United Nations
Our history is carved in the heart of the country. Our milestone memorials named Slaughterhouse Creek, the place on the cliff-tops named Massacre Leap, where the mouth of the valley filled up with our murdered dead bodies. Kevin Gilbert, aboriginal poet
In growing numbers now we’re seeing Aboriginal young Aboriginal men commit suicide outside of custody because they feel there is no hope. Jacqui Katona, Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree;
And he sang as he watched and waited till his ‘Billy’ boiled:
‘You’ll come a–waltzing, Matilda, with me.’ Banjo Paterson, song 1903
I think it is our greatest victory that we have hung on to our humanity. Marcia Langton
Vote Yes For Aboriginal Citizenship Rights. 1967 poster in support of referendum for Aboriginal citizenship
There’s no sense of region. No awareness of where Australia is. And what happens is, we constantly fight other people’s wars. We take on board other people’s problems. Dr Ross Fitzgerald, historian
You see our whole history had been a history of racism. It was underlined always in Australia society ... The Immigration Restriction Act really meant that all the non-Europeans were sent home ... The Dictation Test was only repealed in 1958. Franca Arena MP
Australia is a rich and very lucky country, and yet all I can remember was a growing feeling of isolation inside my own country. John Pilger, Pilger in Australia, ITV 1976
Our West was never really won and the great cities like Sydney, hanging on the very edge of a largely un-pioneered country, are confessions of that failure. No Thomas Jefferson ever lived here. Australian heroes have always been measured by how many Olympic gold medals they can win or how many Pommy wickets they can smash. ibid.
In 1939 Britain went to war and so did Australia. All our yellow-perilled dreams seemed to be coming true. However, in Japanese schools they tell a different story of a white peril. John Pilger, Island of Dreams, TVT6 1981
And to the land of sunshine they came by the shipload. Through the 1940s and 1950s. Ordinary people, brave people. ibid.
They made people change their names, salute the flag, and go through of initiation orgies, with John Wayne and bigotry thrown in. ibid.
The 1950s were the Menzies years … So much was taken for granted then. ibid.
And who sold off our motor industry, our chemicals and our mineral wealth. ibid.
Menzies distorted our image of the world. This appealed to many Australians of course. But it also shored up those preconceptions about our neighbours, and led up straight into Vietnam. ibid.
In Vietnam all our imagined enemies converged. ibid.
Like innocents we imagine we are an ally of a superpower. ibid.
Why do we need to be on any side? ibid.
A large number of Australians accepted the sacking of an elected government by a popist beetroot-coloured figure in a top hat who had allegiance to the Queen of England. ibid.
What he is talking about is the destruction of our last rainforests, the damming of almost every major river in Tasmania, and the slow death through drilling of much of the Barrier Reef. ibid.