I have changed the title of my series of novels from CONCILIAR to SIXTIES because the series, as it has developed, has become more about the society and politics of the 1960s revolution (1960-1975) than about the Conciliar Church which is a part of the Sixties revolution. The next two titles, THE DREAM BECOMES A NIGHTMARE and A SENSE OF LOSS will continue the focus on the upheaval within Australian society.
Category Archives: Australian history
THE SEARCH FOR MY ANCESTORS
It is now almost eighteen months since my son, Roger, and I completed our trip up through northwestern New South Wales to find where our colonial Wilson and Jones Ancestors lived and worked. James Joseph Wilson arrived in Sydney in 1827 and Michael Jones in 1829. Both were convicts. Their free settler wives, Jane and Elizabeth Harris, came from a small village in Wiltshire.
It was the trip of a lifetime, a trip that I’m probably too old to do again.
Of course, we were a couple of rank amateurs as far as making videos went. And viewing the results no television station will be running after us. However, despite our amateur efforts we are more than happy with the results. We achieved what we set out to do. We set out to trace our family history, not only for ourselves, but for Australians with similar family background.
The experiences of our family and like-families were, and are, an important part of Australia’s history. Indeed, they were the starting point of the Australian nation. Without them, there would be no Australian nation. It’s a part of Australia’s history that an elite class is now desperate to erase.
I hope the six episodes of our discoveries will spur other Australians to go and find themselves and Australia in a similar expedition. You won’t regret it.
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Our critical immigration problem
Australians with ancestry going back to the 1800s to mid-1900s will ignore this video at their peril. Ethnic voting blocks are already happening. There are suburbs in Sydney established in the 1800s and early 1900s by Australian and British settlers that are now 90% Asian. The Chinese community voted against the Morrison government because of its vigorous resistance to the bullying of communist China. The loss of the Morrison government has been attributed to the critical shifting of the Chinese vote to the Labor Party. Australia must review its immigration policy before its too late.
Stonnington Council – the wokest of the absurd woke
One has to look for the non-ideological municipal councils across Australia to discover just how few have not lost their reason and subscribed to wokism. That would be easier than counting those who have been hijacked by the extreme Green-Left. The only question about the hijacking is the degree of lunacy.
When it comes to wokist lunacy, Stonnington Council in an affluent area of inner Melbourne, must take the prize. They truly are what Tony Abbott called a bunch of intolerant millionaire lefties, turning on the people they shake down to gather their funds.
I thought the Mornington Peninsula Council was the champion of green-left wokist lunacy, but Stonnington trumps Mornington.
Wokist green-left councils have a range of crackpot policies that usually go against the wishes of the majority. Mornington shines in this respect. The population of the Mornington Peninsula consists of mostly retirees. It is fact that people of retiring age have no interest in leftist policies in general let alone the crackpottery of the woke class.
But do you think the Mornington Peninsula Council takes notice of the many complaints about their green-left wokist policies. Not on your life. That juvenile bunch of councillors simply give their finger to the oldies – in reality telling them to go and get stuffed. They won’t be changing anything, they have declare.
As I say, the Stonnington councillors have this Christmas season taken wokist action that defies all belief – and puts wokist Mornington to shame. Wokist unreason has so overtaken them that they made up and had printed (obviously at great cost) the street greeting in the photo below. They just could not bring themselves to wish the people of Stonnington a Merry Christmas.
Most normal people would be deeply embarrassed to be found guilty of such idiocy. Not the wokist/green left. Ideology will always overcome feelings of stupidity.
Of course, we are by now familiarwith the justification of such imbecility: inclusiveness. They don’t want people of other cultures feeling left out. A little thought about the argument would show it is contradictory.
Christmas is a centuries old European tradition. Cutting it up in the manner below is to wipe it out. The sign below is an insult to most Australians. Second, to desecrate the tradition of Christmas in favor of other traditions is to admit the integrity of a tradition per se. But surely it is contradictory – at least a double standard – to recognise the integrity of the traditions of foreign cultures but to deny those of Australia.
False and stupid reasoning is of no account to those governed by ideology – an ideology that is bigoted, anti-white, and anglophobic.
Local councils have served their purpose, especially now that the wokist/green left class has taken possession of them. It’s time to get rid of them.
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‘Absurd woke-ism’: City of Stonnington urged to “Reinstate ‘Merry Christmas”
A group of inner-Melbourne residents have slammed their local council for removing the word “Christmas” from its holiday messaging.
Jack Evans, 15 December, news.com.au
A small group of inner-east Melbourne residents have slammed their local council for removing the word “Christmas” from its “inclusive” holiday messaging.
This year, the City of Stonnington elected to use the slogan “Make Merry” in some of its public messaging and decorations for the Christmas period.
At the time of publication, some 200 residents of the local government area, which covers some of the state’s wealthiest suburbs, including Armadale, Kooyong, Malvern, Prahran, South Yarra, Toorak and Windsor, have signed a petition demanding the municipality: “Reinstate ‘Merry Christmas.”.
“While we appreciate efforts to promote inclusivity, we believe this change may unintentionally diminish the cultural and religious significance of Christmas for many residents,” petition lead Mikhail Anossovitch wrote
Stonnington City Council has come under fire for its ‘Make Merry’ Christmas decorations
“Christmas is a time-honoured celebration, and the phrase “Merry Christmas” has long been embraced as a warm and traditional greeting.”
Ms Anossovitch said the community respected the “importance of diversity but argued the change threatened “diluting the unique cultural heritage associated with this festive season.”
“We kindly request that the local council reconsider this change and restore “Merry Christmas” on holiday signs,” she wrote.
Some of the hundreds who signed the petition also shared their thoughts on the council’s decision.
“Christmas is special and does not offend any of my colleagues and friends of other faiths – it only seems to offend atheists in the main so why should they have such disproportionate influence over these decisions,” one wrote.
Read the rest here . . .
Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788
The historical detail for my claim that Australia did not exist before the 26th of January 1788 is in chapter 1 ‘Foundations of a New Nation’ of my book Prison Hulk to Redemption. The key issue is the concept of nation. I use the text (below) from my book for my two-part youtube presentation. I include helpful illustrations in the videos.
(699) Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788 – Part 1: The Voyage Out – YouTube
The philosophical arguments about what it means to be a people or nation are in my presentation ‘Edmund Burke on what it means to be a people’. Both should be read or heard in combination to appreciate the full argument.
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Prison Hulk to Redemption
Chapter 1
Foundations of a new nation
ON 28 APRIL 1770, Lieutenant James Cook steered his ship, the Endeavour, into a broad open bay and dropped anchor at its southern shore. He named it Stingray Bay because of the abundance of stingrays in its waters on which his crew gorged. He later crossed out Stingray Bay in the ship’s logs and entered Botany Bay in tribute to Botanist Joseph Banks, the ship’s eager scientist. Banks had put together an impressive collection of specimens of unknown plants and animals after trekking around the land bordering the bay’s shores.
Cook and the Endeavour were on their way back to England after carrying out the official task of observing the transit of Venus from the island of Tahiti. There were also unofficial tasks, one of which was to investigate the existence of the South Land, whose ancient mythology promised great riches. From Roman times, it had been called Terra Australis Incognita—Unknown South Land. The search for the mysterious land of the south had occupied the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Spanish, and later Englishman William Dampier (1688 and 1689). Dampier added little to the findings of the Dutch seamen.
Until Cook’s voyage, the most successful effort to map whatever was south of present-day Indonesia and New Guinea was Dutchman Abel Tasman’s voyage in 1642 and 1643. The Governor of Batavia had ordered Tasman to find the unknown South Land. On his eight-month voyage, Tasman sailed west from Batavia (today’s Jakarta). Keeping the Indonesian islands to the north, he eventually turned and sailed far to the south before turning east. After navigating a great distance, he hit landfall. He followed the shoreline south, mapping it as he went, turned east, then north, but left the coast to head east again. He named this bushy landmass Anthoni Van Diemens Landt after Batavia’s governor. After some days, he made landfall again. Thinking he had sailed as far as Tierra Del Fuego in South America, he noted Staten Landt in his logbook. Staten Landt was the Dutch for the Spanish name of Argentine’s Isla de Los Estados. But Tasman was well short of Staten Landt
Continue reading Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788Edmund Burke on what it means to be people
Gerard Charles Wilson
This essay should be read with the post, Australia did not exist before 26 January 1788, to appreciate the full argument.
When Edmund Burke claimed in An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs that the French Revolution ‘was a wild attempt to methodise anarchy; to perpetuate and fix disorder … that it was a foul, impious, monstrous thing, wholly out of the course of moral nature,’[1] he was targeting a particular theory of political organisation now known as ‘social contract theory’. It is essential to understand that in Burke’s understanding, social contract theory not only determines the form of political organisation of a particular people but the accompanying social organisation as well.[2]
The early theorists of social contract were Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Hobbes is considered the first to introduce the idea. Burke was clearly familiar with the writings of these political philosophers. There are recognisable references to Hobbes (Leviathan) and Locke (The Second Treatise of Government) in his speeches and writings, although he does not name them. He was scathing about Rousseau, reducing his entire philosophy (including the Social Contract) to one of vanity, claiming that ‘with this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness,’ and that ‘it is plain that the present rebellion [in France] was its legitimate offspring.’ [3] In other words, he attributed the ‘wild attempt to methodise anarchy [and] to perpetuate and fix disorder’ in France to Rousseau as a major influence.
In his writings on the influence of social contract theory in Britain, however, he had several contemporaries foremost in mind, notably Joseph Priestly (1733-1804),[4] Dr Richard Price (1723-1791)[5] and Thomas Paine (1737-1809).[6] He did not name Priestley or Paine but openly attacked Price in the Reflections on the Revolution in France, precisely on his understanding of the social contract.
Social contract theory deals with how society originates and how political authority over the individuals forming society can be legitimate. The contract is between a ‘people’ made up of individuals in the ‘state of nature’ and an authority they have elected and appointed. The people allow their elected authority to curtail their natural rights, rights arising from the state of nature, in return for protection and other benefits they could not have as individuals.
Continue reading Edmund Burke on what it means to be peopleAustralia Day and the rest
On my Edmund Burke website, I have been making a series of comments on the radical left’s campaign to create a double Australia, an apartheid Australia, in which the ordinary Australian supports a superior caste of people based on race.
‘Indigenous historian’, Bruce Pascoe, wrote the following in his ABC-supported bestseller, DARK EMU.
Not only did Aborigines invent democracy, pioneer humankind’s first complex fishing systems and bake the first loaf of bread, they were agriculturalists with skills superior to those of the white colonisers who took their land and despoiled it. (p.1)
Preposterous claims, of course, that cannot be verified on the evidence. Peter O’Brien refutes Pascoe’s attempt to reinvent and fabricate Aboriginal history and culture in his Bitter Harvest: The illusion of Aboriginal agriculture in Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu.
It is fine to point out the superiority of Aboriginal culture, but a dastardly racist act to assert Aboriginal culture, pre-settlement, was a primitive stationary culture in which its members, by virtue of that culture, lived a life that was ‘nasty brutish and short.’
Aboriginals and Australians of Aboriginal ancestry have an infinitely greater of chance of thriving in our present European Society. Indeed, there are examples of ‘indigenous’ fat cats all through the public service and government-funded enterprises.
The Cardinal Pell affair has SHIFTED to Edmund Burke Society site
NOTICE
The pages about the Cardinal Pell Affair have been transferred to my Edmund Burke Society (Aust) website.
As a preeminent political and social issue, it belongs on the Burke website.
All comments and records about this most shocking episode in Australian history will from now be on the Burke website. Indeed, the Pell Affair is of Burkean proportions. This screaming miscarriage of justice is an accurate measure of how corrupted Australia has become from its foundations.
The Pell jailing – a pitiful legal farce
Keith Windschuttle not only destroys the prosecution case against Cardinal Pell but shows to what farcical depths the Australian legal system has degenerated. Legally, the world must think Australia has not progressed beyond the era of the Rum Rebellion – though that may be to insult John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps.
The Crown Prosecutor’s Retraction
Cardinal George Pell’s appeal against his conviction of historical sexual abuse of two choirboys will be heard before the full High Court of Australia on March 11. Pell’s conviction in a Melbourne county court in December 2018 was affirmed by the Victorian Court of Appeal in August 2019. The conviction was for two incidents of abuse that allegedly occurred in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, in December 1996 and February 1997.
As several writers in Quadrant have recorded over the past twelve months, the conviction of Pell is one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history. This is not just because of his status at the time as the most senior figure in the Catholic Church in this country, but also because it breached the fundamental legal principle that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That is not how George Pell was treated either at his trial or in his first appeal. The jurors did not make their decision on the weight of evidence by more than twenty witnesses, who demonstrated that Pell could not possibly have done what the complainant said. Instead, the jurors accepted the sole evidence of the accuser, given in camera, with his identity shielded, and without corroboration of any kind. A two-to-one majority of judges in the Victorian Court of Appeal confirmed both the process and the decision.
Read on…
Majority supports Australia Day
From IPA’s Dr Bella d’Abrera;
Australians do love Australia day. It turns out we do want to celebrate Australia day on the 26th of January because Australians love being free! Australia day is a chance for us to come together and celebrate. Leave a comment below about why you love Australia Day. See the video HERE.