old man emu

I'm setting out on a research project to gather information to support my thesis that the reason why the First Fleet was sent to Australia was due to overcrowding caused by a growing criminal prisoner population being housed in hulks around Britain is a myth. In fact, it is a cover stroy to hide the real reason, which was based on the political and economic situation in Europe following the Seven Years War (1756 - 1763) and the granting of independence to the 13 Colonies in America. (That actually happened on 13 September 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed.) The Seven Years War was a massive global conflict fought across five continents that pitted Great Britain and Prussia against France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Spain. Driven by imperial rivalries and European territorial disputes it lead to those countries seeking to establish colonies in the Asia-Pacific Region. My thesis is that Britain, which wanted to secure a base in the Southwest Pacific to keep the French and Russians out, decided to establish a colony on the east coast of Australia, east of the 135th meridian, which had been claimed by Cook for Britain in 1770. An economic factor was that Empress Catherine II of Russia's policies threatened to restrict the sale of hemp. At the time, practically all the hemp and flax required by the Royal Navy for cordage and sailcloth was imported from Russia. Norfolk Island was discovered by Cook in 1774 during his second voyage. He reported that New Zealand flax (seen as a potential source of materials for rigging ships in the age of sail) grew there, as well as the stautesque Norfolk Pine, from which excellent masts and yard arms could be made for the repair of the ships of the British Navy. That is why, barely six weeks after the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove, Governor Arthur Phillip ordered Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to lead a party of 15 convicts and seven free men to take control of Norfolk Island, and to prepare for its commercial development. Norfold Island is probablythe only place where the term terra nullus in fact applied. Archaeological investigation suggests that in the 13th or 14th century the island was settled by East Polynesian seafarers, but human occupation appears to have ceased at least a few hundred years before Europeans arrived. I think that the establishment of a colony on the east coast of Australia was for a clearly politoco-economic reason, and not in order to ease the discomfort of criminals. The idea that free people would travel halfway around the World into the unknown to start a colony from scratch with no guarantee of success would not provide the workforce needed by the government. So, the government gathered up a group of people who were compellable to do as directed. Those people were found in the hulks. Horror stories have been spread about life in the hulks, but they, too, may be a mixture of reality and myth. Conditions were probably no better nor worse than in prisons on the land. Due to growing poverty of free people drawn to the cities, for men who grew destitute and faced the workhouse, life as a convict was measured out against the negatives of offending. After all, prisoners were provided with three meals a day. They left the confines of the hulks regularly to work on govrnment projects. They mastered trades and learnt to read and write. These convicts, already sentenced to transportation, provided a more competent type than could have been drawn from land prisons. Nevertheless, government officials made every attempt to make life on board as punitive as possible. Daily routines were more naval than penal. For some information about life in the hulks, here;s a link: https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/carchipelago/2017/10/10/a-day-in-the-life-convicts-on-board-prison-hulks/

It say heaps about the American people when the celebration of an event critical to the formation of the Nation is overshadowed by the wedding of two entertainment celebrities.

Here's an irony about electricity generation. There is this idea of building giant incinerators to burn a lot of the waste our modern way of living produces. But wasn't the idea of going all in with the various renewable energy sources to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we were producing through burning fossil fuels to heat water to make steam to drive turbines to generate electricity?

I loved Penelope Keith.

Other way around. 40C = 32Re. It's cooler!

Point of interest from the above newspaper item. In 1718 the remperature was recorded as 38 degrees Reaumur. The Réaumur scale is an obsolete temperature measurement system introduced in 1730 by French naturalist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur. It sets the freezing point of water at 0° Ré and the boiling point at 80° Ré. 1 Re = 1.25C and 1 Re = 2.25 F

Lorem ipsum are the first words of extracts from the writings of Cicero. The extracts were selected at random simply to be used when printers were laying out the design of pages.

All I can add to this discussion is lorum ipsum.

If you can find me a Gadigal person who can translate those words, or put them in a sentence, then I'll be more receptive. As it stands I reckon it's another example of PC. And there's not much water to be seen from there.

It's NOT the names of localities that is the problem. It's the use of alledgedly indigenous words to describe things that did not exist before European arrival.

While it is reasonable to use indigenous words that had/have meaning in the speech of the people who used them, it is ridiculous to apply words for things that did not exist for those people. As an example, would the concept of "stairway" ever have existed until stairways had been introduced by people who made them? I believe that when the first overland explorers reached northern Australia, near the ocean, the local indigines saw the rifles of the explorers and immediately called them 'musquit' or similar. The reason? They had seen the muskets of the Dutch and Malays who came to fish in the area before the British explorers arrived from the South. The explorers would have been carrying rifles.

Yeah, but the Maori language is still a living language. I don't think that any of the indigenous languages of the Greater Sydney Area are still spoken.

The words identifying places in the map that PMCC posted are not locality names. They are the names identifying galleries in the Art Gallery. Got nothing to do with actual indigenous people. There's nothing wrong with applying an existing indiginous name to a locality. "What's in a name?" Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene II). The name Gilgandra originates from an Indigenous word meaning "long water hole", which is a waterhole in the Castlereagh River alongside the main street. There are plenty of places in the local area that are of indigenous origin. Say the name and people can identify the location.

Update your data, GON. The Yanks want to create a massive arsenal storage in the middle of Victoria, and they are servicing their subs in W.A. Don't forget Tindall and Pine Gap. What's going on around Townsville?

I wonder how many people in the vicinity of the Art Gallery of NSW speak the Gadigal dialect of the clan that occupied that particular area in the past. I suspect none, and that any descendants have long since moved away.