THE INVADERS:

The people who lived in Australia when the white men arrived; the aborigines, were of such a primitive scattered-and migratory from place to place that they have not been a difficulty. No one could say that they really occupied the land. They numbered about 300,000 scattered over a continent almost as large as the United States of America. There are now about 50,000, full-blooded aborigines, who remain a primitive people. As a remnant of very early mankind they are interesting to the student of human progress, but they are not a serious problem. other hand, Australia has been peopled by a white race predominantly of British origin; daring, energetic and independent. They determine its destiny by the success of their efforts to use its natural advantages and overcome its drawbacks; and from that point of view the Australian people have proved, are proving and will prove themselves conquerors." (Arthur Mee's Enc.  vol 4, page 2445)

THE CONQUERORS:

Ranging from the only complete act of genocide ever achieved by the human race in the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines (accomplished by 1876) through to official and semi-official posses intent on retributive justice as recent as 1927, Aborigines were literally slaughtered in their thousands. In open conflict the methods of extermination used ranged from para-military operations such as the Tasmanian Black Line adapting a technique of quail and pheasant shooting and later used with effect on the mainland to decimate the kangaroo population, to the placement of strychnine poison in flour, a method still used in Australia to eliminate crows.

THE VICTIMS:

* R. Mathews writes, "The Australian countryside is littered with monuments to past follies perpetrated by Australian Governments in the name of development, in the form of rusting railway lines that run nowhere, jetties at which ships have never called, land settlement schemes marked only by the crumbling chimney stacks of empty farmsteads and fence lines long since covered by drifted sand and deserted townships which serve only as a setting for nostalgic paintings of outback Australia." (*The Natural Resources of Australia, Angus & Robertson).