History

[damian 0]

I took the effort to type all this out. I find the words (and thoughts) of people from our past to be quite amazing.

 

My Father has sent me some photocopies of various things he found in his dusty collection of stuff. One thing he uncovered was an old picture book that had some late 1800's photographs of prominent world centers and sites. There are 100's of pictures and a caption for each one describing some of the surrounding story. The book was compiled by an American publishing company. My dad sent me a copy of the page relating to Sydney, in Australia. It shows a picture of the old Town Hall. The captioned text is "amazing'. Watch how it goes from one extreme to the other: (I have cut out some of the less interesting text)

 

“Sydney is a charmingly located city, its harbour is one of the most beautiful in the world….. on many wooded promontories can be seen the villas of the wealthy. The city of Sydney is on some accounts more attractive than Melbourne and has many handsome buildings. In its vicinity are many handsome residences, elegantly furnished and surrounded by extensive and beautifully kept grounds. The principal exports of Sydney are tallow, hides, wool and gold. The last named article has an annual value of about 1 million pounds. Of course one who lives in the civilized portions of Australia such as Sydney has no more understanding of the Australian aborigines in the interior of the continent than most Americans have of the Indians in the “Far West”. Nevertheless, they exist there, though now rapidly dying out in the presence of a superior race. They are much lower in the scale of humanity than the natives of New Zealand, being naturally savages of the lowest kind, absolutely naked, ignorant of the use of all metals, having no houses, and rarely attempting to cultivate the ground. But in the course of time these aborigines will inevitably fade away, and civilization represented here at Sydney will characterize all the mighty area of Australia”.

 

Another picture he sent is of some rather poorly looking aborginals:

 

“Natives of Queensland, Australia – Queensland is the latest of England's Australian colonies, having been separated from New South Wales in 1859. Formally it was a penal settlement, a dumping ground for incorrigible ruffians…. Who are of great value in cultivating the land and erecting public buildings. This illustration shows some of the natives living in the interior. As has been said elsewhere in describing Sydney, these aborigines are a wretched race. Like most savages, they are fond of liquor, and were it not for laws prohibiting the sale of it to them, they would soon be exterminated by their own excesses. Originally these natives, like the Maoris of New Zealand, were probably cannibals. …. The sad fact impresses itself upon the traveler as he looks upon these millions of aborigines in the South Pacific, that little can be done to improve them. They are doomed. If left alone, and with the gradual development of the centuries , they might perhaps evolve themselves into a higher order of humanity. But like the North American Indians, they are disappearing rapidly before a new and superior race, and the islands and continents of the great southern ocean will soon be peopled only by their conquerors".

 

 

Way to go white boy.

 

Other sites include George Washington's house in Mt Vermont and the big Buddha in Kamakura. Both the pictures and text are not complete in the photocopies (they were on adjacent pages in the book).

 

The other quite amazing thing he has is a 1 Pound note issued by the Japanese Government. It has no date but has in prominent text “ONE POUND. THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT” and in smaller kanji “dai nippon teikoku seifu” which the guys at work tell me is roughly “big nippon imperial government”. The note has a tropical print on it of palm trees. I suspect that it is from the times when Japan occupied perhaps Singapore and they introduced a new currency for the island, which at that stage used pounds as a currency denomination (my guess). Pretty bloody interesting I think.

[slimeypete 0]

Very bloody interesting, db. Cheers for sharing mate. I don't normally like things labelled "history", but this rocks.

[farquah 0]

Bill Bryson`s book "Notes from a Sunburned Country" is also a wicked read if you are interested in the developing history of Australia, (I say developing due to the relative "newness" of Australia in terms of history!). There are some pretty interesting comments about teh Aboriginies in there also and how they suffered in Oz as the colonialists arrived (including the legalisation of actually hunting them as animals by the upper classes!). Pretty eye opening stuff.

 

Farquah