Australia Day, past and present Today is Australia Day and I am
thinking how our attitudes to our history have changed over
time. My childhood history book referred to Captain Cook
‘discovering Australia’ in 1770. That completely discounted the
presence of indigenous Australians here for at least 40,000
years, not to mention all the European sightings of our
continent long before Cook. Then there is the changed attitude
to a convict past. Not so many years ago it would have been a
dreadful shame to have convict forebears. Now such ancestors are
much sought after, as it associates us with pioneers, and we are
amused by some of the rogues and think the Kelly gang
bushrangers were forced into their crimes. Perhaps some people
rewrite their history a bit by glossing over their ancestor’s
‘crime’ (“they were hungry so stole a loaf of bread”). I wonder
what misrepresentations our descendants will accuse us of
making? The following is a letter to the editor published in the
Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday 9 Decemb