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Australian History Quotes

Browse 24 quotes about Australian History.

Australian History Quotes

“Only Indigenous people are real Canadians, Kiwis, and Aussies, everybody else is an immigrant. Before you yell slurs at an immigrant of today, Start by heading back to Europe yourself.”

ColonialismIndigenous PeopleColonial HistoryIndigenous RightsIndigenous WisdomAustralian HistoryIndigenous CultureCanadian HistoryMaori CultureKiwi Culture
Book:Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo
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“Ironically Britain claimed the whole continent simply in order to claim a few isolated harbours astride trade routes. It was like a speculator who, buying a huge wasteland flanking a highway because it had a few fine sites for road cafes and filling stations, found later that much of the land was fertile and productive.”

AustraliaGreat BritainAustralian History
Book:The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History
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“For fourteen years Wiliam Walker alias Brown alias Shields alias Swallow alias Waldon alias Todd alias Watson had been a major irritant to British authorities on both sides of the world. To the London police he was an accomplished thief. To the colonial government in Van Diemen's Land, he was a clever and determined escaper; he had stolen one of its vessels and caused much embarrassment by making it back to England not once but twice, one of only a handful of runaways to do so. To these skills of theft and evasion must be added outstanding seamanship, a glib tongue, extraordinary resourcefulness and a capacity for leadership. Among his more admirable attributes his loyalty to his family should also not be forgotten. To the convicts of Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur he was a living legend, tangible proof that escape from the island prison was possible. By any standards, he was a remarkable man...”

HistoryAustraliaAustralianConvictsCyprusAustralian HistoryConvictAustralian ConvictWilliam SwallowWilliam Walker
Book:The Man Who Stole the Cyprus: A True Story of Escape
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“From when she was young, Molly had learned that the fence was an important landmark for the Mardudjara people of the Western Desert who migrated south from the remote regions. They knew that once they reached Billanooka Station, it was simply a matter of following the rabbit-proof fence to their final destination, the Jigalong government depot; the desert outpost of the white man. The fence cut through the country from south to north. It was a typical response by the white people to a problem of their own making. Building a fence to keep the rabbits out proved to be a futile attempt by the government of the day. For the three runaways, the fence was a symbol of love, home and security.”

TrumpPresident TrumpAboriginal CultureAustralian HistoryAboriginalsAboriginal HistoryStolen Generation
Book:Rabbit-Proof Fence
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“The idea of discovery and consequent possession is used by those with neither the intelligence nor sensitivity to see the value in lives other than their own. Anyway, there is no need to possess anything when there is access to everything. It is only when someone says that your mother belongs to them that there is a problem.”

ColonizationAboriginalAboriginal CultureColonisationAustralian LiteratureAustralian HistoryAustralian AuthorAboriginal AustraliansAboriginesLand Rights
Book:Nanima: Spiritual Fiction
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“Blunder Down Under (The Sonnet) Humans be human, alive and aware, not tokens of ancestral blunder. Awake, arise and right the wrongs, whether in the west or down under. We gotta fight on the beaches, We gotta fight on human grounds. This time we gotta fight as human, not as puppets to colonial clowns. Fight as brave lions for sacred inclusivity, not for saffronication as domesticated cows. Fight for justice, rejuvenated by reason, not for prejudice, decreed by apeman vows.”

GenocideColonialismAustralianFirst NationsIndigenous RightsNeonazisHindutvaAustralian HistoryAussieAussie Battler
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
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“For eighty years convicts had been shipped to Australia, and a total of 163000 had set out on that voyage from which few returned. In the modern history of Europe there was rarely a planned deportation on a more ambitious scale until the era of Stalin and Hitler.”

AustraliaBritish EmpireDeportationAustralian History
Book:The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia
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“European colonists cleared or damaged bush because they did not value it and introduced to more than sixty-five per cent of the continent mono-cultures of non-Australian species they did value... it is our southern Eurasian ancestors... who are actually nomads because we overpopulate... damage land in the process, then wage wars on neighbours to take their land in order to continue to over-populate, and on it goes.”

PoliticsSustainabilityAncestorsColonizationOverpopulationEuropean HistoryAustralian HistoryUnsustainableIntroduced Species
Author:Michael Archer
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“She had thought about how everywhere in that place Romans had written the local people out of their history. She was trying to figure out how people valued a thing, what made something revered while other things were overlooked. Who decided what was out with the old, what had to have a replacement? What traditions stayed and what tools, household items, art, things, evidence of someone, languages, fell away. But when she tried to draw a vague line to the artefacts of Prosperous she was stumped — why the artefacts of Middlesbrough were important and not those from home.”

HistoryObjectsAustralian HistoryIndigenous Australians
Book:The Yield
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“She tried to keep herself and her life small and manageable. Much like a poem. The condensing of the wide, unknowable past that runs right up behind them. She doesn’t do that anymore, her life isn’t a poem, she knows it’s a big, big story. Her people go all the way back to the riverbank, and further, after all — the river and what happened at the river was a time traveller, their story has no bounds in time.”

Deep Human HistoryAustralian HistoryIndigenous AustraliansLanguage And CultureDeep History
Book:The Yield
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“August wanted to hand the papers back and to tell them everything, draw them close and whisper that their lives had turned out wrong, that she and her family were meant to be powerful, not broken, tell them that something bad happened before any of them was born. Tell them that something was stolen from a place inland, from the five hundred acres where her people lived. She wanted to tell them that the world was all askew and she thought it was because of the artefacts, that she thought they should understand it was all so urgent now, that they knew truths now tell them that she wasn’t extinct, that they didn’t need the exhibition after all.”

HistoryColonizationAustralian HistoryIndigenous Australians
Book:The Yield
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“The evidence of their civilisation, after so many years of farming, was difficult to find on the surface of the land. But they said it was embedded in the language of Albert’s dictionary, that with the Reverend’s list and all the words that Albert wrote, and other old people remembering the words too, that it would now be recognised as a resurrected language, brought back from extinction.”

EvidenceAustralian HistoryIndigenous AustraliansLanguage And Culture
Book:The Yield
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“We were destined to have our own way from the beginning and America - two nations that have always had their way, for they killed everybody else to get it ... Here we have a symbol of nationality [Canberra, the national capital] ... The first historic event in the history of the Commonwealth we are engaged in today without the slightest trace of that race we have banished from the face of the earth.”

Australian HistoryIndigenous Australians
Author:William Morris Hughes
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“Deep down there is the feeling that what we participated in was morally wrong, and can never be looked upon as legitimate. We can make all kinds of excuses, but it can never justify the murder, the savagery and the barbarism that was inflicted on the Vietnamese people under the guise of saving the world from communism.”

Cold WarVietnam WarMilitary HistoryAntiwar QuotesAustralian HistoryMilitary QuotesVietnam VeteransMenziesPentagon PapersMenzies Government
Book:The Soldiers' Story: The Battle at Xa Long Tan Vietnam, 18 August 1966
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“Vietnam was never a threat to America or Australia, but it was a threat to their perceived interests. For those selfish interests we fought and were maimed and died. It was not for patriotism, and not to save freedom or humanity: it was to save vested interests.”

Cold WarVietnam WarMilitary HistoryAntiwar QuotesAustralian HistoryMilitary QuotesVietnam VeteransMenziesPentagon PapersMenzies Government
Book:The Soldiers' Story: The Battle at Xa Long Tan Vietnam, 18 August 1966
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