17 August

We have the history of Australia backwards. Take the conversation about the ‘Voice’ right now. Like all conversations about Aboriginal Australia, the starting point is the idea that post-1788 Australia, the European arrival, is the baseline. ‘Modern’ Australia. And we now have to find a way to recognise Aboriginal Australia in modern Australia, such as via a ’voice’ to our national (European-style) parliament. The actual history of modern Australia is the reverse of that. It’s the story of that European culture colliding with the world’s far and away most ancient culture and landscape. And failing, at every step. We’re so arrogant, we assume we’re the advanced civilisation here. But we don’t have a clue at all how to ‘drive’ this continent. And the longer we stay here, the more disastrous that not having a clue gets. The place is falling apart. Rivers ran dry years ago already. 4.4 BILLION tonnes of the little topsoil the continent had has been washed and blown into the ocean. The whole place erupts into fireballs now in the summer. Meantime most of the unique character of being Australian, from our accent to our way of living and seeing the world, has not one traceable link to any of that European culture we brought with us. We got it from the land and people we found here. They’ve been turning us Aboriginal far more than we’ve been making them Europeans. Think about that, we’re all being transformed by this place, and again we’re so arrogant we think it’s us who has to help Aboriginal Australia. Tens of thousands of years of history acts on us every day, via the land and the people who were in it. Forget all of our fancy (imported) technologies and machines. None of it will be any use to us without water and soil, and food. Every civilisation that’s ever collapsed thought its clever technologies would save it. They never do, because the much bigger relationship to the land is all that sustains societies in the longer term.