Aborigines In Australia, past and present - Travel/Creative
Josh Green, 5L
A Country of Green, Gold and a Forgotten Black.
“Dreaming place ...
you can’t change it, no matter who you are.
No matter you rich man, no matter you king.
You can’t change it.”
It struck me the other day, as I was walking into the dark abyss of yet another school lesson, that I was missing something. And it was, with a certain degree of sentimentality, that I thought of my childhood in, and my subsequent yearly visits to, Australia; the ‘New World’, a progeny of Captain Cook’s passion of exploration, a ‘world’ steeped in bloody, juvenile, discomposing, (yet oh so rich) history. A ‘world’ colonised by the rejects of society; those tending more towards criminal than scholarly aptitudes. A ‘world’ known for its dry, flat, hot, inhospitable climate, yet comparatively also its gargantuan variation and number of unusual animals, deadly plants, and inspiring marine life.
Indeed, it is a nation labelled as ‘the most deadly in the world’, where after escaping spiders in your shoes, snakes in your garage, scorpions on your doorstep, you can still, whilst having a swim on one of Australia’s world-renowned beaches, be attacked by poisonous seashells which, believe me, actually go for you. If you escape those nasties, there is still always the chance of being chomped by a croc, swallowed by a shark, or indeed being drawn out to sea by a deadly ocean current, known as a ‘rip’.
Despite Australia’s inhospitable climate, geography and local inhabitants, I shall never forget the land of my birth. Everyone who goes to Australia comes back a new person, having scrambled out of their self-centred world of naivety and self-consciousness. There is something about the country, the people, the immensity of the place, that gives a distinct sense of individuality, a sense of loneliness, a sense of being just a small part of something unimaginably large, and a desire to irrevocably force one’s way into that world, that dangerous world, that inhospitable world, yet that world of seeming inexhaustible wonders.
The Australian people are something of a reflection of this. Just as Australian geography is something unmatched anywhere in the world, so are its inhabitants something unique. It is widely known that Australians are laid-back, good-humoured, affable peoples. However, despite their poise and good nature, all Australians attempt to conceal a discomposing history, full of malignance and brutality. As the first Europeans came over to Australia, they found just one obstacle...