From: brian@coombs.anu.edu.au (Brian)
Subject: Re: Aussies
Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
Date: 12 Apr 92 03:47:43 GMT

Clyde.Spencer@f223.n143.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Clyde Spencer) writes:

>BR>From: brian@coombs.anu.edu.au (Brian)
>BR>Date: 9 Apr 92 23:24:07 GMT
>BR>Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University
>BR>Message-ID: <brian.702861847@coombs>
>BR>Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns

>BR>Clyde.Spencer@f223.n143.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Clyde Spencer) writes:

>BR>>In the course of reading the give-and-takes between the Australian and
>BR>>American posters it has occured to me that there may be a historical
>BR>>explanation for the difference in attitudes.

>BR>>Most of the American Forefathers were risk-takers who came to the New
>BR>>World to escape oppression -- being told what they could or couldn't do.
>BR>>They arrived in an untamed wilderness with no one to depend on but
>BR>>themselves.

>BR>>The Australians on the other hand, were forcefully removed to a penal
>BR>>colony against their will.  There they found themselves being controlled
>BR>>by their captors, who told them what they could do and what they
>BR>>couldn't do.  If they went along with the program they survived.  If
>BR>>they didn't they may not have.  It seems being taken care of by their
>BR>>captors has become institutionalized there.

>You did edit out my acknowledgement that the above was a bit
>tongue-in-cheek.

	I accepted it for what it was.  Even tongue-in-cheek, its a judgement.

>BR>        Oh, well, another American shows a total lack of
>comprehension about conditions in colonial australia.  Tell me, do
>you think that the convicts were kept in nice stone prisons and under
>close supervision the entire time they were serving their sentences?

>No, actually I don't believe that.  But correct me if you didn't
>actually have prisons that were used as initial holding sites and might
>have been resorted to if those released got into trouble.  The essence
>of the thesis is whether or no initially the supervision was more so
>than in America and whether restrictions imposed on those "released on
>their own recognizance" was greater than the Americans experienced.

	After their initial stay in Barracks, which lasted less than a month
in most cases, the convicts were released on their own recognisance.  They
were not allowed to hold land until they had served their initial sentence,
but could seek work at reduced wages from landowners and settlers around
them.
	Those that consistently broke the law, were sentenced to futher
periods of confinement either on the mainland or on Norfolk Island or in
Tasmania. 
	The amount of "supervision" which most convicts recieved (and please
remember in your thesis that most of the immigrants to Australiaafter about
1815 were indeed free settlers, not transported convicts), was the same as
the normal immigrant.  The only difference was that a transported settler
could not return home - ever.

>BR>        Do you believe that Australia is some sort of benigne piece of
>BR>countryside where fruit grew from the trees and animals layed down in front
>BR>of you so that you could slaughter them?  Do you think that the Kooris were
>BR>willing to simply sit still and see their land taken away from them?

>Although probably not totally germane, you did not have the equivalent
>of North American wolf packs, certainly nothing like the NA grizzly
>bear.  

	No, we don't.  We do though, have the largest collection of venomous
snakes and spiders in the world.  We have in order, the second, third and
fourth most venomous snakes, and we have the third and fourt most venomous
spiders.  Whilst death might not take the form of a noisy bloody great hairy
animal, it existed and still does, in much more common forms than anything
in the US (snakes and spiders exist in the very heart of even the most 
developed city unlike bears and wolves).

>	It is my impression that the North American indians, particularly
>the plains indians, were a great deal more war-like, and with their
>rapid adoption of horses introduced early by the Spaniards, were a more
>formidable adversary than the Kooris.  The first Vikings (not exactly
>soft and easy going) to discover "Vineland" were apparently exterminated
>by the native indians.

	The myth that grew up was that the Kooris basically rolled over and
died when the whites arrived.  Historical research in the last 30 years have
proved that to be exactly what I called it, a "myth".  The Kooris fought
long and hard to retain their control of the land.  Early settlement in Sydney
and Tasmania was almost wiped out by the efforts of a few Kooris such as
Pemalway (?sp  In Tasmania in particular, it was a very close run thing
with large numbers of settlers and convicts being killed by the Kooris (one
reason why the whites over-reacted and wiped them out was the widely held
belief, similar to that of white settlers in America that the only "good
native was a dead native..." :-(. 

> BR>        Australia and the people transported to Australia were
>everything you said about America Clyde.

>Except the reason for being there and hence the conscious decision to
>take a risk to be free.

	As I've said, after about 1815, the majority of people who arrived
in Australia to settle the country were in fact free settlers, not convicts.
So how does that help your thesis Clyde? 

> BR> More so in some cases, its climate is much
> BR> harsher than the North American continent

>Not so.  In the area in which the colonists landed, particularly New
>England, winter temperatures of -30 C are not uncommon with a meter of
>snow on the ground for up to six months.  One can survive in the desert
>with little shelter and clothes if water is available.  However, to
>survive in the New England climate, shelter, fuel and adequate clothing
>is a necessity.  That takes a peculiar industriousness to prepare for
>winter that has won international acknowledgement for "yankee
>ingenuity."  Most of the Eastern United States similarly has a snowy
>climate that is not exactly benign.

	Yet, in summer, there is numerous edible foods growing wild, and
there is abundant wildlife.  In Australia, whilst there is in fact quite
a large abundance of wild foods available, whites could not recognise them
as such because of their very alien appearance (remember, Australia has been
isolated evolutionary for several million years).  Whilst we have, in your
opinion benign winters, when compared to our summers, they are extreme,
particularly to immigrants from a country where its very, very, very
different. 

> BR> and it is much, much more arid (its the driest continent in
>the world).

>If total area of aridity is somehow important (most of your population
>after all lives in coastal cities) than the point is well taken.
>However, if we are concerned with extremes and the challenges brought
>about the necessity to cope with hardships, I will simply ask if you
>have heard of Death Valley?  Actually, much of our Western interior from
>the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevada is extremely arid and while it
>doesn't get quite as hot as Australia in the summer it get considerably
>colder in the winter.  It is a hostile environment!

	So?  You have colder winters, we have much, much hotter summers.
Most of the continent in summer has _average_ temperatures in the high
30's low 40's celsius and in some areas it does in summer reach into the
low 50's regularly.   In addition, water is not always available.  It
was the availability of water, more than anything which determined the 
population of the Kooris. 

> BR> Remember, also a large proportion of those transported
>here were hardened city bred criminals as well, so they were neither
>prepared or understand what farming entailed (and most European
>farming practices were found to be outright wrong for Australian
>conditions and had to be unlearnt fast).

>Farming didn't seem to be the strong point for the first New Englander
>colonists either.  The story of our "Thanksgiving" holiday is how the
>local indians saved the Puritans from starvation the first winter.

	It might not have been the strong point, but as long as you have
a high rainfall with plentiful water around, its easy to farm.  Arid, drylands
farming is a completely different kettle of fish.  In addition, the Kooris
weren't interested in helping the white settlers.  Most looked upon their
arrival as being unwanted and a large number were openly hostile. 

>BR>        The major difference you don't allude to though, is that because of
>BR>the very nature of the shore on which they were marooned (no return from
>BR>transportation rememeber), Australians decided instead of competition to
>BR>ensure survival, that _co-operation_ was the way to go.  Co-operation has
>BR>worked for us for over 200 years.  Its allowed us to literally build a
>BR>nation from nothing in a much shorter time than your own.

>BR> Competition has done the same for yourselves, but at what cost?

>Well, for nearly 200 years it has made us the envy of the world with
>numerous peoples of various ethnic backgrounds wanting to immigrate
>here.  It has earned us the moniker of "melting pot of the world."  It
>is perhaps however that very thing that causes you to be critical of us.

	It is.  To us, whilst competition is necessary, we don't let it
rule our lives.  We prefer to pull together and create something all of us
can enjoy rather than allow one person to dominate a group. 

>We are splintered by various factions who suffer real and imagined
>prejudice; we have groups demanding special privileges.  Our school
>systems are turning into Towers of Babel as English becomes a minority
>language.  We have perhaps become the victims or our own success as many
>people have lost the will to work hard and excel.  You are smug in your
>self-righteousness about your superior culture.  Yet you do not carry
>the burden of the complex problems we have inherited from our past
>successes.  

	Which your past "successes" actually created for you.  Don't you
think that because your over-relience upon competition has in fact
created those "problems" that it could well be a fault of the extent you
do rely upon competition?  Couldn't it also be that there could well be
alternatives which could well do the same job and not produce those sorts
of "problems"?

>		Again, I repeat and old Indian saying: "Do not be critical
>of another man until you have walked a mile in his shoes."

	Cuts both ways boyo......




--
Brian Ross__________________________________________________________________
	"If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it
will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people
suppose that it is always wrong."______________________________J.K.Galbraith