A Peek into Australia’s Past – The Palawa & Us All

The Palawa, is the name by which the Tasmanian Aboriginal tribes were in general known. There were several tribal groups that identified with different area’s of Tas’, such as the Big River tribe, a central tribe associated with the central rivers and lakes or the North Eastern tribe whose lands were those around The Bay of Fires and so on. These tribal people ranged across all of Tasmania in migrations, according to the different season. But they knew their country and their homelands and identified themselves with that region and no body argued about it much.

Blogging, Travelling and all that Biz

With the new year comes the time to organise and reflect on the year past. I’m deep into this now, organising my writing and busy editing past posts. I’ve been blogging and writing publicly now for a few years and I’ve been with WordPress for about 18 months. I must admit I find the WordPress site the easiest to negotiate… even when they occasionally get it pear shaped with the date stamp thing as with one or two past blog. There simply is no better, or easier way to stay in contact with family, friends and my readers, as well as those great adventurers who you meet constantly on the road. Like souls and others who are living the dream and holding life by its horns as they tour the country.

My latest project has been to gather up my postings into some order, mostly for my elderly Mum who is wanting to read these and can’t manage a computer. Hence…  I have released a anthology of my blogs in a pricey full colour print and a cheap large e-book both with many full colour pic’s. It has been an interesting exercise for me.

Australian History – A Golden Lie

We have been on the Gold Trail in NSW now for several weeks and it has been a wonderful experience. I have written about it in a number of my posts but today, as we contemplate leaving the gold trail I want to tell you about something about which we know very little, and acknowledge even less.

I love research, and when I go into an area to explore I love to delve into the history related to where I am. It is one of my passions, but with moving into the gold fields I found it hard to discover the older history of these places, that which related to Australia’s unwritten history. It was difficult to find out information about the Aboriginal tribes of the area’s we visited, as with others.

Acknowledging that people of Aboriginal heritage actively participated in colonial history and particularly in the gold discoveries of the mid 1800’s is a reality that is rarely recounted.

Food for Thought – Wild Snacks

Bush foods, those delightful snacks that nature provided truly about all about us but you need to understand what it is you are eating if you don’t wish to end up at the doc’s explaining just what it is you have done to yourself.

I am on a mission! I have a want to learn all about the foods in nature’s supermarket, which abounds all about us. It is a slow and careful process of course as it should be, try to learn from those around you if you can. As a child I could never understand why it was that anyone would plant so many trees in parks and the like, mostly ornamental. Why not plant nature’s fruits and foods that could feed the hungry and homeless souls in this world, a free bounty for all and sundry from hungry kids to those less flush with funds?

Owning Your Past – Colonial Australia – Part 2

To read part 1 -> Mistakes – Owning Your Past

Continued … Colonial Solutions for Social Problems

One of the few institutions of the colonial era that did address a social problem prevalent of the day was Point Puer, at Port Arthur Penal Prison. Young boys and men were seen to be in an insidious position when they arrived into the colony as convicts. Some as young as 9yrs old were exposed to the worst of social constructs, abuse and ill-use as convicts, this particularly in the penal settlement of Hobart Town where the majority of convicts were first sent. This problem of unassigned boys and how to deal with them was considerable .

Unlike the young girls who were quickly assigned for reasons addressed previously, as well as being placed into service as domestic servants, the boys were unwelcome and viewed as a drain on the penal system and so Point Puer was developed. It was no holiday for the young boys and young men but it was a improved arrangement which often gave them skills and training they badly needed. Some of these skills were of course questionable as can be seen in the wake of the bushranging era of the mid-late colonial era… many of these bushrangers were early inmates of Point Puer.

Historical Mistakes – Owning Your Past – Part 1

Australian History, as Australians and the world is told in our society and schools is largely a fantasy… It is the construct of a self-interested class of people who have an obsession with ‘Mother England’ and who attempt to rule our society even today. Why and just what is it they want us to believe?

It was interesting to read a former Prime Ministers comments recently published, someone within the system who has had the chance to consider all the flaws evident in the machinery of our Government which was formed under English rule.

So what is it that can be considered corrupted in our historical account? Read on…

1. Captain Cook discovered Australia : Reality = Lieutenant Cook mapped the east coast for the British Admiralty.
2. Australia was terra nullis : Reality = Australia the continent/island supported a large, stable and well established tribal based society that not only prospered but traded widely.
3. Australia was colonized by the English : Reality = The English shipped out approx. 160,000 convicts and vast numbers of emigrants sourced from European, Irish & Scottish countries along with others.
4. Colonization of Australia was ordered and peaceful : Reality = Colonization was haphazard and led largely by squatters. In Northern NSW & Queensland it was anything but peaceful.

Yes there is a great deal that has been corrupted … and you can add to this very incomplete list other aspects of our history in relationship with native Aussies which has been also adulterated by those with agenda’s all their own…

1. The white colonists murdered thousands of natives : Reality = The Aboriginal Native Police, under the control of the Government massacred thousands of tribal Aboriginal people along the frontier to gain control of the land.
2. Whiteman murdered and decimated the Aboriginal tribes when they arrived in Aus : Reality = disease from which there was no immunity in the indigenous population decimated the indigenous population in the early years of colonization. The penal settlements were under orders from the Governor to treat the natives well, (not everyone listened as usual) actually they had trouble finding natives initially and resorted to kidnapping them in an attempt to learn from them. ie.. Bennelong, Colby etc
3. Explorers opened up the Inland and led the way for expansion throughout the continent : Reality =  Adventurers who claimed to have discovered and opened up the inland, were taken there by Aboriginal guides, mostly using often well established tracks and depended on the natives and often squatters for their survival and comfort. These guides were not always treated well though some did receive recognition from the adventurers (explorers).

The list goes on, and still the fallacies perpetuate.

Aus. History a Beautiful Lie – Mark Twain

Australian History … does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies.

A quote from: ‘Following the Equator’ 1897 Mark Twain

Learning about Colonial Aus. is a passion of mine, as many of my readers know. Discovering Mark Twain’s travelogues was truly a delight … how ignorant of me not to know of his writings about Australia at the turn of the century!

Ignorance is bliss is it not? We often read the most contemporary of works instead of those older texts, the classics and the hidden gems to be found in the Trove and the newssheets of yesteryear and on dusty shelves of a library. I have always enjoyed delving into the peoples history of yesteryear in old newssheets, but there is never enough time to read all that I would so enjoy to venture into. Mark Twain was an author such as I had not fully explored. I guess him being a Yank (seppo’ in colloquial terms) had something to do with this, I of course had read Huckleberry Finn and others but I had enough trouble with time in exploring our Aussie writers … so much to read, so little time.

What Mark Twain was referring to in the quoted text is the lies and misinformation Australians are fed even back as far as our Federation in 1901.

The Killing Times – A Colonial Secret

I have just read a most amazing book ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ by Timothy Bottoms, a deeply researched account of Colonial Australia and events, which are largely hidden in our history. A very difficult book to read through it is none the less one of the most important collection of colonial accounts, which has ever graced my research shelves.

It raises many issues and helps to settle many questions of a past in colonial Australia, which has been hidden in hypocrisy, deceit and shame. Australia’s colonial history is my history. It is a history that is largely if not completely ignored in the education of our kids. Our schools teach what is a English history to Aussie kids and in doing so completely ignore our social and cultural diversity and it can be argued that this gives rise to racial dissention within our society today. Our current education in history is failing to give our kids an understanding about their truly diverse heritage in pretending we are all of English descent which is simply not true. We aren’t even English by majority!

Is it a Question of Race or Attitude … when Doors Don’t Open

We recently had one of the more humorous experiences we have ever come up against in our lives in regards to skin colour. It was a question of race, or more appropriately one of skin colour. Racial identity has become a very blurred issue since the arrival of the interactive global community and this particularly in Australia where we have something of a melting pot.

Australia has always been part of Asia, no one just moved the place here… the land has always been here and despite being a country where our natural skin colour should be brown-black, we are governed by what is seen as a largely white skinned democracy. This statement in itself blurs the lines of reality. It is a theology rather than a fact. Parliament is supposed to be dominated by our representatives even if it would seem women don’t live in Australia anymore if you go by the number count.

Does the question of race really exist anymore? No doubt for some trapped in an economic socio-merry-go-round it seems to. But in the broader view, is it at all really relevant?

But first, let me recount what happened so you can understand where I am coming from.