The Two Australias
The Two Australias
Before I continue writing about our journey, I think it is time to talk a bit about Australia itself. Somehow, I don't think that is accurate enough if we talk about one Australia only. The more I am here and the more I learn about the country, the more I realize that there are Two Australias. |
| The Aboriginal Memorial in the NGA in Canberra/ACT |
The First Australia was/is populated by the indigenous peoples and there are two main groups, the Aborigines (from Latin “ab origio” – from origin/beginning) and the Torres Strait Islander. Last is less known when we think about Australia. Aborigines lived almost everywhere in livable Australia, but the Torres Strait Islanders lived at the northern coast of Queensland and the Torres Strait Islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea.
For nearly 60.000 years, Australia was home to these people. The oldest and longest existing culture in human history. If we think about it, the Holocene started about 10.000-12.000 BC years ago. This culture is ancient, it saw the last ice age come and go and remained untouched until January 18-20 in the year 1788. On this day, everything changed, and history has been rewritten by the Brits and marks the begin of the Second Australia.
The Aborigines believe the land they are living on does not belong to them. They belong to the land. Their culture has a very deep connection to it's land, environment, the creatures that are living in it, the plants, grasses and trees which grow on it and they see themselves as part of it.
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| View from North Sydney to Kirribilli and Sydney Harbour Bridge |
And then the Brits and other Europeans came. In their way of thinking, the land was empty and did not belong to anyone. Which is kind of a dilemma because Aborigines also think the land belongs to nobody because you belong to the land. Two vastly different cultures were now colliding. They literally took over the land, declared this amazing indigenous culture as subhuman, discriminated, enslaved and killed them. From that day, it continued until the 20th century. The whitefellas hoped that these people would eventually die out in their reserves, they also took their children away and raised them in their way of living and thinking in order to hope they would forget their roots.
But they did not.
These people live here among others. If we see this Second Australia today, we see mainly white people with roots from Europe but also many people with roots from Asian countries because Australia is much closer to those than to Europe. Indigenous people, the first “Australians” make today only about 3.5% of the current Australian population (about 800.000 of a population of 25 million people) They still face racism and are called “you are no Australian!”.
Think about it, 60.000 years these people have lived here and even today, some of them face comments like this. We can see such things also in America, where some people do not consider the natives as Americans and tell them that they do not belong there.
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| Australian and Aboriginal Flag at Namadgi National Park ACT |
This topic kept me busy for quite some time already, and before I can write more about the journey, I had to write these things down. Last week, when weather was not nice, we went to a movie called "The Australian Dream". After that, I have reached a point where I had to let my fingers go to the keyboard...
“The Australian Dream” is a brilliant movie. It tells the story of Adam Goodes, an indigenous AFL player who faced racism during his career but stood up against it. He became Australian of Year in 2014. His doing led to controversy discussions around the country and society about daily racism. Now you would think that this happened long ago. No, all of this just happened and became public in the years 2013-2014. Things got better and I hope that they will improve further.
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| Adam Goodes. Photograph by Phil Hillyard / Newspix Here Adam Goodes poses in the same way as Nicky Winmar did in 1993. Nicky Winmar's (also faced racism back then) message was " I'm black and proud!" |
This movie was shaking, touching and it tells also a lot about daily racism. Something very subtle, a sneaking process, which comes back or maybe it never went completely away!?
I must agree with him, that this is something that should be addressed everywhere in the world because the same tendencies are visible in Germany, Estonia and all over the world. The most shocking, it even can make you president or head of state in countries around the world. Not only Australia faces this, America, Europe, Asia. Racism is everywhere and we should be ashamed of it and more than that, we should be careful because it's power drives us apart and makes dangerous and ugly things happen.
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If you want to know more about the movie, check out this link:
Also, a good text to read:
Also a good movie about life of Aborigines nowadays:
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