A Description of the Sydney Area in ‘Aboriginal production had been dramatically disturbed by the British presence. The arrival of a thousand hungry mouths, followed by hundreds more, put unprecedented pressure on local food resources. So what would the Daruk people have thought of all this? To them such large- scale destruction of sacred places and strange, violent behaviour towards their land was inexplicable.
The newcomers seemed to knock down trees without any reason, for they were not making canoes, gathering bush honey or catching animals. Stones were moved and stacked together, clay dug up, shaped and cooked, holes were made in the ground, large unwieldy structures built. At first they may have equated the clearing with the creation of a sacred ceremonial ground…Perhaps they thought a huge ritual gathering was to be held, dangerous business from which they should steer well clear. There is no doubt the Daruks subsequently avoided the settlement, for the only way to bring them back was by an official kidnapping.’ – (P.
Grimshaw, M. Lake, A. McGrath, M. Quartly, Creating a Nation ) D ISPLACING I NDIGENOUS P EOPLES M AP : Australia T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY They did not foresee that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries nearly per cent of them would die by exposure to germs, by the loss of their lands and resources, and in battles against the settlers.
The experiment of settling Brazil with Portuguese convicts had been abandoned when their violent behaviour provoked angry reprisals from the natives. The British had adopted the same practice in the American colonies until they became independent. Then they continued it in Australia. Most of the early settlers were convicts who had been deported from England and, when their jail term ended, were allowed to live as free people in Australia on condition that they did not return to Britain.
With no recourse but to make a life for themselves in this land so different from their own, they felt no hesitation about ejecting natives from land they took over for cultivation.