Politics & Council
7 February, 2024
Miserable convicts ... they built our nation
By GAVAN HOLT JUST imagine it. After a journey of 24,000km and 250 days the 11 sailing ships of the First Fleet, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, arrive at Sydney Cove from Portsmouth in England. On board at arrival were 1372 passengers including 732...
By GAVAN HOLT
JUST imagine it. After a journey of 24,000km and 250 days the 11 sailing ships of the First Fleet, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, arrive at Sydney Cove from Portsmouth in England.
On board at arrival were 1372 passengers including 732 convicts, 306 ships’ crew and 245 marines.
Before them was a more or less untouched natural environment, they were starting from scratch at the bottom of the world.
They had to rely on the provisions and supplies on those ships until such time as they could produce local food and make use of local
materials.
Looking on from the land were the Aborigines of the Eora people, with perhaps another 750,000 indigenous people roaming the vast land that was to become Australia.
Do we ever think about those miserable convicts, male and female, some serious but most petty, who arrived on those ships and the rewarding lives many of them went on to build for themselves, with thousands of their descendants still in Australia today.
This was the commencement of one of the greatest examples of nation building that the world has seen.
Possibly the only superior one is that of the Americans. Two hundred and thirty six years later we have the great multicultural success story that is Australia.
No doubt there were missteps along the way, including violent interactions between the indigenous and the settlers.
There are even whispered stories of terrible confrontations that occurred in what is now Loddon Shire.
There is also no doubt that all citizens of our modern nation have benefited from the arrival of the English. Yet there are those who want to change the date of Australia Day as though this will dissolve the violence and the wretchedness experienced by a minority of current Aboriginal Australians.
That problem is the result of mismanagement by the elites in government, particularly the policies of the last 50 years of separatism rather than assimilation, but that is another story.
Of all the defences I have seen of retaining January 26 as our national day, none has been better outlined than that by former New South Wales premier Bob Carr.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph on January 22, 2000, he said, “January 26 is the day the whole brave, self-mocking, patient, largely successful exercise in nation building began. It is the one day that speaks of all that happened: the good and bad, the inspiring and shaming. The story of us all.
“There is no alternative. It is altogether appropriate. Well used it will tell future generations what really happened – the brutality, the heroism, the tenderness, the patience. It will teach humility as well as pride. Advance the Australian fair go and its inevitable symbol, Australia Day. There is no other day that says it all.”
The problem in Australia is that too many of our leaders are not prepared to come out and take a stance on issues that mal-contents are using to divide us.
They stand in the middle of the road with an eye on the next election.
There is no better example of this than the ambivalent response by some of our leaders to the slaughter, rape and mutilation of 1200 citizens of democratic Israel by the terrorists of Hamas.
The nub of the matter is that activists have permeated the minds of our elites in government, business, sport and media such that they believe that those members of the First Fleet and the Europeans who followed were invaders and colonisers.
They do so from the comfort and wealth created by those “invaders”.
Due to financial problems because of COVID-19, the Victorian
government gave Tennis Australia $60 million to get it out of it’s difficulties.
If I was the premier of Victoria I would be pulling Tennis Australia in and telling them in no uncertain terms how they should have highlighted Australia Day at the matches on January 26.
Pat Cummins is a brilliant cricketer, who is our cricket captain and wears the baggy green representing Australia. In doing so he earns millions of dollars and good luck to him.
For him to come out and use his position as captain to suggest that we should change the date of Australia Day because of the claimed offence it causes a small
minority is something at which all Australians should take umbrage.
So my position is that first we should do a national audit on where all the billions of dollars of taxpayers money has gone that has been spent on Aboriginal issues in this country.
Second, it is time to move on from the politics of grievance and find a new way forward to solve the problems we have in our Aboriginal remote communities and town camps. All Australians want this fixed.
It’s time for the old guard national Aboriginal leaders such as Davis, Pearson, Mayo and Langton to move on and let others such as Price and Mundeen have a go.
Third, leave the date of Australia Day where it is.
I believe this is the position of over 80 per cent of the people of Loddon and am prepared to stand up for it.
Alternatively, if you stand in the middle of the road for long enough, you will eventually get run over.
* Gavan Holt is Loddon Shire Mayor and the Wedderburn Ward councillor.