HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
AUSTRALIA
The Earliest occupants of Australia we can establish, were the Aboriginal people. They lived a nomadic existence, with no settled towns or villages,some customary places for rituals, some rock art, stone axes and arrow and spear heads and dug-out canoes.Accommodation was bark lean-tos. There was no "Government" in any civilised sense and no clothing except loin coverings at times -bark or hides,and hides used for warmth.There was no farming or grazing. Hunting and gathering was the rule and prevented any significant advance in their society, in this generally harsh environment. Upon their first contacts with Europeans , arriving in their sailing ships, they are said to have regarded the ships as something like birds, and their strange , pale occupants as either spirits or "gods" of some sort. In time, they came to value some of the possessions of these creatures , especially those for which they had a use - knives, axes.and the like.
The numbers of Aboriginal people at the time of European arrival can never be known , but the general consensus seems to be that there might have several hundred thousand over the entire continent. But if that were so, one might have expected very much more extensive contact than actually occurred.
European exploration could have begun as early as the 1500s. In 1515 the Portugese arrived in Timor and in 1515 Portugese Dominican Friars established a mission there.
Timor is only 610 Kilometres from Australia. It beggars belief that having come around the mighty coast of Africa and across the Indian Ocean, they would not have tried to reach the fabled "Great South Land of The Holy Spirit" their maps conjectured must exist -just to balance up the Globe!
There was a complicating factor to consider before talking about any such activity :the Treaty of Zaragoza complementing the Treaty of Tordesillas, in dividing up the world between Catholic Spain and Catholic Portugal , by the Bull of Pope Alexander VI with demarcation lines passing through the Pacific and part of Australia, and the Atlantic respectively. Whilst Timor was just in the Portugese sphere of influence, the most fertile and attractive part of Australia as it was to become known, was in the Spanish sphere. It would not have been in the relative interests of Portugal to make known anything it had discovered in the "Spanish sphere of influence."
There was a complicating factor to consider before talking about any such activity :the Treaty of Zaragoza complementing the Treaty of Tordesillas, in dividing up the world between Catholic Spain and Catholic Portugal , by the Bull of Pope Alexander VI with demarcation lines passing through the Pacific and part of Australia, and the Atlantic respectively. Whilst Timor was just in the Portugese sphere of influence, the most fertile and attractive part of Australia as it was to become known, was in the Spanish sphere. It would not have been in the relative interests of Portugal to make known anything it had discovered in the "Spanish sphere of influence."
The great fire and tsunami which destroyed the Royal Library of Portugal in Lisbon on All Souls Day 1755 - following a massive Earthquake - destroyed any records of such exploration which we might have hoped to find. The only possible clue is the wreck of a "mahogany ship" which is reputed to appear and disappear in shifting sands in Armstrong Bay in South Western Victoria. Despite three Symposia on the subject, no conclusion has been reached.
Then, the Protestants got the idea that they would make an effort to find this "Terra Australis".
The first of these folk seems to have been a Dutchman Willem Janzsoon who, in the ship DUYFKEN of the Dutch East India Company, sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1606 and made landfall on the Western Shore of Cape York in what is now the State of Queensland. This is the first recorded European landfall on the Australian mainland.He charted 320km of the coastline, thinking he was recording the Southern coast of New Guinea.The land was swampy and ten of his men were killed by hostile natives, so he abandoned the unpromising expedition. He returned to Australia in July, 1618 and landed on what is now believed to have been North West Cape of W.A. - he assumed it was an island without attempting to circumnavigate it.
Shortly after Janzsoon's landfall in the Gulf of Carpentaria , a Portugese working in the Spanish Navy , Luis Vaz de Torres sailed through the Strait that now bears his name , proving that New Guinea was in fact not connected to Terra Australis.
Dirk Hartog (there are several spellings of both names) (1580-1621) was the next of the Dutchmen. He commanded a Dutch East India Company vessel and in 1616 landed on what is now called Dirk Hartog Island off Shark Bay 800 Kms North of present day Perth W.A. and the most Westerly point of the Australian mainland. Hartog found "nothing of interest"!
Another Dutchman Frederik de Houteman turned up near Perth W.A.in 1619 but nothing came of that. Then in 1628 there occurred a singular and dramatic contact - the Dutch East India Company's brand new ship "BATAVIA" Commanded by Arianen Jacobsz was wrecked on the W.A. Coast on Morning Reef near Beacon Island part of the Houtman Abrolhos. This was a major event which is very well documented in Books, Magazines and even a TV Documentary. Of her 322 Passengers and Crew, 40 were drowned and 282 survived for a time. However a bloody mutiny took place and at least 100 people died in the process.A rescue ship from Batavia was sent out to find BATAVIA . The story gets incredibly complex with further murders, trials, executions and, in the end only 68 people returned to Batavia.
In 1642 another Dutchman Abel Tasman ( 1603-1659) of the Dutch East India Company discovered Tasmania (the Island State South of the now Australian mainland, as well as New Zealand and Fiji. He returned on a second voyage in 1644 and named the mainland "New Holland".
Some measure of relief from this flood of Dutchmen was provided in 1688 when the English adventurer William Dampier arrived in King Sound W.A. He had already had quite an interesting life sailing in merchant vessels to Newfoundland and to Java before joining the Royal Navy in 1673. He fought in two battles against the Dutch , but was invalided out after a catastrophic illness. For several years he did various activities in Jamaica and Mexico. But in 1679 he fell in with the Buccaneer Captain Bartholomew Sharp on the Spanish Main of Central America and was involved in a series of piratical activities which resulted in a circumnavigation of the globe. In 1683 a privateer (British licensed Pirate in effect) John Cooke engaged Dampier to round Cape Horn and raid Spanish possessions in Pacific South America . At its peak this successful adventure consisted of ten ships. Cooke died and the Pirate crew elected Captain Charles Swan to take his place in command of the CYGNET which Dampier joined . They sailed on, raiding Spanish possessions in the Asian Pacific area . In 1688 Dampier was commanding a second privateer ship when he anchored in Shark Bay W.A. After many hazardous adventures , Dampier returned to England with the journals of his goings on and a tattooed slave whom he exhibited on a travelling exhibition whilst his journals were being printed.
His book " A New Voyage Around the World" was a publishing sensation even attracting Admiralty interest. In 1699 he was given command of H.M.S. ROEBUCK a 26 Gun Frigate and a mission to explore the East Coast of what the Dutch had named New Holland (now Australia). Travelling via the Cape of Good Hope (it was too late in the sailing season to attempt Cape Horn) he returned to Shark Bay in August, 1699.From there he sought to follow the coast North East but ended up North of New Guinea and out into the Bismarck Archipelago of Pacific Islands. ROEBUCK was by now in very poor condition and though he was in fact only 100 Kms from the East Coast of New Holland he was forced to turn back . The ship foundered at Ascension Island in February, 1701. Dampier and his crew were rescued by an East Indiaman and reached England in August, 1701. He was Court Martialled for cruelty to one of his officers and found guilty. Subsequently he was given another naval command and fought against the Spanish until finishing his service in 1707 . In 1708 he was again engaged as a Privateer and circumnavigated the globe for a third time, but died in 1715 in substantial debt.
The Dutch were to have one last fling in this direction when, in 1696 - three years before Dampier's last visit to Shark Bay, Willem de Vlamingh visited what is now called Dirk Hartog Island and found the Pewter Plate Hartog had left as a record of his discovery.
We see then, an intense period of exploration from 1606 to 1699 - 93 years of people, mostly Dutch, seeking commercial advantage out of finding and exploiting -if possible - the "Great South Land" all of which came to nothing.
It is interesting to note that there was never any attempt to take slaves from Australia. (Though we shall later see that there was for a time a cruel trade in importing "Kanaka" supposedly indentured labour from the Pacific Islands.) The absence of any such slave trade seems to reflect two factors - no great numbers of natives in evidence and /or natives thought unlikely to be saleable. I doubt that it was moral virtue on the part of the explorers, as the Dutch were actively involved in the African slave trade at the expense of the Portugese.
But the high point of Dutch maritime and trading influence was reached in the late 1600s. The expanding influence of England and her Royal Navy over time saw the Dutch Empire repeatedly under attack and still later the French assisted in that process. Colonies were lost, re-gained, lost again , re-gained in a bewildering series of wars , treaties and international mayhem. But at the end of it all the vitality of the Dutch Empire was diminished and that of the British Empire was on the rise.
We have seen the trade obsessed Dutch coming to see what the Great South Land had to offer - not much for their tastes! Not even decent slaves. For the Spanish no overly-obvious Gold. Who is up next?
In the ensuing years, the French , arguably builders of the finest and fastest fighting ships of the days of sail, and quite fine sailors,were pre-occupied with domestic political issues. Philosophical considerations arising out of the so-called Enlightenment, fed into civil dissatisfaction arising from years of bad harvests in the mid 1700s and the national financial burdens following the 7 Years War ending in 1763(fought against a Coalition of the British, Prussians and Portugese), and involvement in the American War of Independence against the English. All of this culminated in 1789 in the French Revolution .
Despite all of this turmoil, and more still to come, in the subsequent Napoleonic Revolution , the French did maintain some exploration activity , In 1756 the King - Louis XV - had despatched de Bougainville to look for the Great South Land. However, after reaching South America and the Falklands, de Bougainville and his crew of 400 Frenchmen found themselves in Tahiti surrounded by hundreds of canoes laden with Polynesian beauties and tarried for a while finally claiming Tahiti for France. It is believed that he almost encountered the Great Barrier Reef on Australia's East Coast and he turned North to avoid being dashed against the rocks . He ended up in the Pacific Islands, his crew suffering from Scurvy and had to head for safety in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies before heading home.
In 1772 King Louis XV had sent two further exploratory missions , one led by Dufresne who actually did some exploration on Tasmania and had contact with the native people there for a few days. After some of his crew were killed by New Zealand Maori warriors he retreated to Mauritius . The two ships constituting the second expedition became separated in a severe storm and one returned home, The other, commanded by de St.Alouarn sighted Cape Leeuwin in W.A. and sailed North to Shark Bay of Dutch and Dampier fame.
The French expeditions were characterised by a distinctly scientific character in their staffing - a fact which has left us a rich fund of journals , charts and illustrated scientific works .
Enter the English
"Perfidious Albion" is the insult often hurled at the English in international affairs. One of the early uses of a similar phrase was by the great French Bishop and Preacher /Theologian Jacques-Benigne Bossuet who referred in a famous sermon to " L'Angleterre, ah, la perfide Angleterre" ("England ah treacherous England").
In the case of the mission of Captain James Cook R.N. and the Bark ENDEAVOUR the description was well-justified. Ostensibly, the mission was intended to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti . He left in 1768 and arrived in Tahiti after rounding Cape Horn , in 1769. But he had other orders - he was to find and examine the east Coast of the Great South Land . Cook was already a renowned Navigator and Cartographer since his youngest days in Canada fighting the French. He found the South East corner of the Australian Continent on 20th April, 1770 and sailed northwards up the East Coast identifying the good harbour of Botany Bay which he named, making the first landfall on 29th April, 1770. He later observed a little to the North, but did not enter, the majestic harbour now known as Sydney Harbour which Cook noted could readily accommodate 100 Ships of the Line at anchor. Far on to the North on the Queensland Coast his ship ran aground , but he got her off, careened her at what is now Cooktown to effect repairs, then completed his mission via Batavia, and the Cape of Good Hope - a circumnavigation achieved. The British goal at this stage was not trade, but a military penal settlement on the Great South Land and then to see what would evolve. Cook's own published report and those of the well-connected Sir Joseph Banks - Botanist and Member of the Royal Society - excited great interest in popular and official circles. American Independence denied England her Penal Colonies in America. Cook's discovery acquired fresh interest . He was sent on a second mission from 1772-1775 to define the limits of the Great South Land as far as possible. A third mission from 1776 - 1780 completed the task in greater detail but sadly resulted in the death of Captain Cook in Hawaii, after retrieving some valuable instruments stolen by the natives there.
Not only a brilliant Navigator and Cartographer, Captain Cook was a prudent, thorough professional who paid very careful attention to the health of his crews. Only in the last stages of his onerous third voyage can one detect some fraying of his judgement of issues and events under the great strain of years of command at the extremities of the Earth.
In 1787 Captain Arthur Phillip R.N. and his Fleet of ships containing convicts, soldiers and supplies had set out, and they arrived in Botany Bay in mid January, 1788 to set up a Penal Colony. Phillip determined that the better location would be Sydney Cove, now in Sydney Harbour but a severe gale delayed the move until 26th January, 1788 - giving us the annual date of AUSTRALIA DAY.
Amazingly here at the end of the world two French ships under the command of La Perouse arrived two days earlier on 24th January. Polite , even good relations developed between the two groups, with exchanges of visits and mutual assistance with supplies. La Perouse did not sail away until 10th March and before he did he committed to the British some of his Journals and Charts which were subsequently published in France. La Perouse and his ships were never seen again.
The last words attributed to King Louis XVI before he was guillotined in the course of the Revolution were : " Is there any word of M.de La Perouse?" Poignant indeed , within moments of his own cruel death.
The whole pattern of English early settlement in Australia whether on the mainland or in Tasmania or offshore on the infamous Norfolk Island, was one of military administration of a Penal Colony.It was left to the few free settlers, freed convicts and discharged soldiers to pursue and develop trade in their own interests. It would be some time before the "Mother Land" awoke to the trading potential of the "good for nothing but convicts" ,Colony.
In reviewing all of this history, I have come to a new appreciation of the energy and enterprise of the few free, and many more freed convicts who , in their own interests, developed what became Australia. The Dutch and Spanish had no use for it, the English Government saw it fit only as a Penal Colony. The newly-freed men and women saw it as their home (after a time) and cherished the freedom and climate it provided . No longer the grim misery of class -ridden , gloomy Georgian England but rather the bright sunshine, limitless land, fresh air and promising prospects beckoned them to try to make a new life, to find a new way. And, strangely, it was the very efficiency of the British administration that made it all achievable - military security, civil law, and frequent sound Government gave them what they could never achieve at "Home" in England. Those born in Australia came to proudly call themselves "Cabbage Tree Hat Lads" for the hats they wove out of the Cabbage Tree foliage. It was a neat contrast to the English -born "Pommies" - a derogatory term of uncertain origin, but said to have referred to their ruddy complexions (like the pomegranate) .
To come from this unpromising beginning to be the 13th largest economy in the World and the 24th largest Exporting Nation in the World is nothing short of remarkable.
Australia has become a lucky country , yet she suffers a serious lack of fresh water and an almost total lack of oil. But, unknown to those early explorimg European powers, she concealed vast treasures of gold, silver, copper, zinc, diamonds,coal, natural gas, iron ore, alumina, bauxite, and with careful husbandry the capacity to produce enormous crops of wheat, and other grains,sugar, fruit and vegetables and to produce vast quantities of very fine wines and dairy products as well as wool from sheep and meat from sheep and cattle, that awaited only the development of refrigerated shipping. More recently that same industry and resourcefulness has made her the educator of hundreds of thousands of students from Asia, and an active participant in international aid programmes and co-operative defense initiatives. It is a continuing and impressive story.
In Part II b. I shall look at the awesome historical background of the other great country - Nigeria - looking for any common factors, similarities and dissimilarities. What , if anything, can be understood from looking at the two countries experience side by side?
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| Willem Janzsoon |
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| THIS REPLICA OF DUYFKEN IS A REGULAR VISITOR TO AUSTRALIA |
Shortly after Janzsoon's landfall in the Gulf of Carpentaria , a Portugese working in the Spanish Navy , Luis Vaz de Torres sailed through the Strait that now bears his name , proving that New Guinea was in fact not connected to Terra Australis.
Dirk Hartog (there are several spellings of both names) (1580-1621) was the next of the Dutchmen. He commanded a Dutch East India Company vessel and in 1616 landed on what is now called Dirk Hartog Island off Shark Bay 800 Kms North of present day Perth W.A. and the most Westerly point of the Australian mainland. Hartog found "nothing of interest"!
Another Dutchman Frederik de Houteman turned up near Perth W.A.in 1619 but nothing came of that. Then in 1628 there occurred a singular and dramatic contact - the Dutch East India Company's brand new ship "BATAVIA" Commanded by Arianen Jacobsz was wrecked on the W.A. Coast on Morning Reef near Beacon Island part of the Houtman Abrolhos. This was a major event which is very well documented in Books, Magazines and even a TV Documentary. Of her 322 Passengers and Crew, 40 were drowned and 282 survived for a time. However a bloody mutiny took place and at least 100 people died in the process.A rescue ship from Batavia was sent out to find BATAVIA . The story gets incredibly complex with further murders, trials, executions and, in the end only 68 people returned to Batavia.
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| REPLICA OF THE BATAVIA |
Some measure of relief from this flood of Dutchmen was provided in 1688 when the English adventurer William Dampier arrived in King Sound W.A. He had already had quite an interesting life sailing in merchant vessels to Newfoundland and to Java before joining the Royal Navy in 1673. He fought in two battles against the Dutch , but was invalided out after a catastrophic illness. For several years he did various activities in Jamaica and Mexico. But in 1679 he fell in with the Buccaneer Captain Bartholomew Sharp on the Spanish Main of Central America and was involved in a series of piratical activities which resulted in a circumnavigation of the globe. In 1683 a privateer (British licensed Pirate in effect) John Cooke engaged Dampier to round Cape Horn and raid Spanish possessions in Pacific South America . At its peak this successful adventure consisted of ten ships. Cooke died and the Pirate crew elected Captain Charles Swan to take his place in command of the CYGNET which Dampier joined . They sailed on, raiding Spanish possessions in the Asian Pacific area . In 1688 Dampier was commanding a second privateer ship when he anchored in Shark Bay W.A. After many hazardous adventures , Dampier returned to England with the journals of his goings on and a tattooed slave whom he exhibited on a travelling exhibition whilst his journals were being printed.
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| WILLIAM DAMPIER |
His book " A New Voyage Around the World" was a publishing sensation even attracting Admiralty interest. In 1699 he was given command of H.M.S. ROEBUCK a 26 Gun Frigate and a mission to explore the East Coast of what the Dutch had named New Holland (now Australia). Travelling via the Cape of Good Hope (it was too late in the sailing season to attempt Cape Horn) he returned to Shark Bay in August, 1699.From there he sought to follow the coast North East but ended up North of New Guinea and out into the Bismarck Archipelago of Pacific Islands. ROEBUCK was by now in very poor condition and though he was in fact only 100 Kms from the East Coast of New Holland he was forced to turn back . The ship foundered at Ascension Island in February, 1701. Dampier and his crew were rescued by an East Indiaman and reached England in August, 1701. He was Court Martialled for cruelty to one of his officers and found guilty. Subsequently he was given another naval command and fought against the Spanish until finishing his service in 1707 . In 1708 he was again engaged as a Privateer and circumnavigated the globe for a third time, but died in 1715 in substantial debt.
The Dutch were to have one last fling in this direction when, in 1696 - three years before Dampier's last visit to Shark Bay, Willem de Vlamingh visited what is now called Dirk Hartog Island and found the Pewter Plate Hartog had left as a record of his discovery.
We see then, an intense period of exploration from 1606 to 1699 - 93 years of people, mostly Dutch, seeking commercial advantage out of finding and exploiting -if possible - the "Great South Land" all of which came to nothing.
It is interesting to note that there was never any attempt to take slaves from Australia. (Though we shall later see that there was for a time a cruel trade in importing "Kanaka" supposedly indentured labour from the Pacific Islands.) The absence of any such slave trade seems to reflect two factors - no great numbers of natives in evidence and /or natives thought unlikely to be saleable. I doubt that it was moral virtue on the part of the explorers, as the Dutch were actively involved in the African slave trade at the expense of the Portugese.
But the high point of Dutch maritime and trading influence was reached in the late 1600s. The expanding influence of England and her Royal Navy over time saw the Dutch Empire repeatedly under attack and still later the French assisted in that process. Colonies were lost, re-gained, lost again , re-gained in a bewildering series of wars , treaties and international mayhem. But at the end of it all the vitality of the Dutch Empire was diminished and that of the British Empire was on the rise.
We have seen the trade obsessed Dutch coming to see what the Great South Land had to offer - not much for their tastes! Not even decent slaves. For the Spanish no overly-obvious Gold. Who is up next?
In the ensuing years, the French , arguably builders of the finest and fastest fighting ships of the days of sail, and quite fine sailors,were pre-occupied with domestic political issues. Philosophical considerations arising out of the so-called Enlightenment, fed into civil dissatisfaction arising from years of bad harvests in the mid 1700s and the national financial burdens following the 7 Years War ending in 1763(fought against a Coalition of the British, Prussians and Portugese), and involvement in the American War of Independence against the English. All of this culminated in 1789 in the French Revolution .
Despite all of this turmoil, and more still to come, in the subsequent Napoleonic Revolution , the French did maintain some exploration activity , In 1756 the King - Louis XV - had despatched de Bougainville to look for the Great South Land. However, after reaching South America and the Falklands, de Bougainville and his crew of 400 Frenchmen found themselves in Tahiti surrounded by hundreds of canoes laden with Polynesian beauties and tarried for a while finally claiming Tahiti for France. It is believed that he almost encountered the Great Barrier Reef on Australia's East Coast and he turned North to avoid being dashed against the rocks . He ended up in the Pacific Islands, his crew suffering from Scurvy and had to head for safety in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies before heading home.
In 1772 King Louis XV had sent two further exploratory missions , one led by Dufresne who actually did some exploration on Tasmania and had contact with the native people there for a few days. After some of his crew were killed by New Zealand Maori warriors he retreated to Mauritius . The two ships constituting the second expedition became separated in a severe storm and one returned home, The other, commanded by de St.Alouarn sighted Cape Leeuwin in W.A. and sailed North to Shark Bay of Dutch and Dampier fame.
The French expeditions were characterised by a distinctly scientific character in their staffing - a fact which has left us a rich fund of journals , charts and illustrated scientific works .
Enter the English
"Perfidious Albion" is the insult often hurled at the English in international affairs. One of the early uses of a similar phrase was by the great French Bishop and Preacher /Theologian Jacques-Benigne Bossuet who referred in a famous sermon to " L'Angleterre, ah, la perfide Angleterre" ("England ah treacherous England").
 |
| Lieutenant James Cook R.N. Captain of H.M.Bark Endeavour (he later achieved the Rank of Captain.) |
In the case of the mission of Captain James Cook R.N. and the Bark ENDEAVOUR the description was well-justified. Ostensibly, the mission was intended to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti . He left in 1768 and arrived in Tahiti after rounding Cape Horn , in 1769. But he had other orders - he was to find and examine the east Coast of the Great South Land . Cook was already a renowned Navigator and Cartographer since his youngest days in Canada fighting the French. He found the South East corner of the Australian Continent on 20th April, 1770 and sailed northwards up the East Coast identifying the good harbour of Botany Bay which he named, making the first landfall on 29th April, 1770. He later observed a little to the North, but did not enter, the majestic harbour now known as Sydney Harbour which Cook noted could readily accommodate 100 Ships of the Line at anchor. Far on to the North on the Queensland Coast his ship ran aground , but he got her off, careened her at what is now Cooktown to effect repairs, then completed his mission via Batavia, and the Cape of Good Hope - a circumnavigation achieved. The British goal at this stage was not trade, but a military penal settlement on the Great South Land and then to see what would evolve. Cook's own published report and those of the well-connected Sir Joseph Banks - Botanist and Member of the Royal Society - excited great interest in popular and official circles. American Independence denied England her Penal Colonies in America. Cook's discovery acquired fresh interest . He was sent on a second mission from 1772-1775 to define the limits of the Great South Land as far as possible. A third mission from 1776 - 1780 completed the task in greater detail but sadly resulted in the death of Captain Cook in Hawaii, after retrieving some valuable instruments stolen by the natives there.
Not only a brilliant Navigator and Cartographer, Captain Cook was a prudent, thorough professional who paid very careful attention to the health of his crews. Only in the last stages of his onerous third voyage can one detect some fraying of his judgement of issues and events under the great strain of years of command at the extremities of the Earth.
 |
| H.M.BARK ENDEAVOUR REPLICA |
In 1787 Captain Arthur Phillip R.N. and his Fleet of ships containing convicts, soldiers and supplies had set out, and they arrived in Botany Bay in mid January, 1788 to set up a Penal Colony. Phillip determined that the better location would be Sydney Cove, now in Sydney Harbour but a severe gale delayed the move until 26th January, 1788 - giving us the annual date of AUSTRALIA DAY.
 |
| Early French depictions of Australian Aboriginals were captive to the the popular ideal of "the noble savage" - the idea that if only there had been no "civilisation" Man would have developed in an ideal social and physical state. It was as unrealistic as the early English paintings in Australia featuring soft Northern Hemisphere light and gentle landscapes |
The last words attributed to King Louis XVI before he was guillotined in the course of the Revolution were : " Is there any word of M.de La Perouse?" Poignant indeed , within moments of his own cruel death.
The whole pattern of English early settlement in Australia whether on the mainland or in Tasmania or offshore on the infamous Norfolk Island, was one of military administration of a Penal Colony.It was left to the few free settlers, freed convicts and discharged soldiers to pursue and develop trade in their own interests. It would be some time before the "Mother Land" awoke to the trading potential of the "good for nothing but convicts" ,Colony.
In reviewing all of this history, I have come to a new appreciation of the energy and enterprise of the few free, and many more freed convicts who , in their own interests, developed what became Australia. The Dutch and Spanish had no use for it, the English Government saw it fit only as a Penal Colony. The newly-freed men and women saw it as their home (after a time) and cherished the freedom and climate it provided . No longer the grim misery of class -ridden , gloomy Georgian England but rather the bright sunshine, limitless land, fresh air and promising prospects beckoned them to try to make a new life, to find a new way. And, strangely, it was the very efficiency of the British administration that made it all achievable - military security, civil law, and frequent sound Government gave them what they could never achieve at "Home" in England. Those born in Australia came to proudly call themselves "Cabbage Tree Hat Lads" for the hats they wove out of the Cabbage Tree foliage. It was a neat contrast to the English -born "Pommies" - a derogatory term of uncertain origin, but said to have referred to their ruddy complexions (like the pomegranate) .
To come from this unpromising beginning to be the 13th largest economy in the World and the 24th largest Exporting Nation in the World is nothing short of remarkable.
Australia has become a lucky country , yet she suffers a serious lack of fresh water and an almost total lack of oil. But, unknown to those early explorimg European powers, she concealed vast treasures of gold, silver, copper, zinc, diamonds,coal, natural gas, iron ore, alumina, bauxite, and with careful husbandry the capacity to produce enormous crops of wheat, and other grains,sugar, fruit and vegetables and to produce vast quantities of very fine wines and dairy products as well as wool from sheep and meat from sheep and cattle, that awaited only the development of refrigerated shipping. More recently that same industry and resourcefulness has made her the educator of hundreds of thousands of students from Asia, and an active participant in international aid programmes and co-operative defense initiatives. It is a continuing and impressive story.
In Part II b. I shall look at the awesome historical background of the other great country - Nigeria - looking for any common factors, similarities and dissimilarities. What , if anything, can be understood from looking at the two countries experience side by side?
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