For Michael, Catherine and Brianna and their forebears
Introductory overview
'... having been shipped out of Britain as criminals, we were shipped
back as cannon fodder; so that, when peace came, the survivors could
return to their real mission as Australians - growing cheap wool and
wheat for England'.
Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, p. xii.
'...with the colonising project came some other considerations...who is
to be included...and who is to be excluded altogether? These are
questions that exercised the Australian colonies in great detail
and have continued to trouble the Australian nation'.
Ann Curthoys, 'Colonisation and Immigration', p. 5.
Part 1 Australia Bound
(© 30 June 2006)
'Between convict and black, much blood is mingled in the soil of this
lovely, lugubrious island - so much, in fact, that parts of it seem to
be emblematic spots, places where ordinary nature is permanently
corrupted by the leaching of history, a salt nothing can extract from the earth'.
Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, pp. 120-1.
'I might love this place, my friend,' he said, 'if it were not for the
lags. Though if it were not for the lags, there would be no place
at all. The puzzle you see'.
Thomas Keneally, The Playmaker, p.96