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Australia has come a long way since the days when Captain Cook stumbled ashore to
find an Aboriginal way of life that went back some 40,000 years. Indeed, Australia must
really be divided into 'modern Australia' and 'indigenous Australia', since there is a
wealth of disparate elements that constitute this compelling country.
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| The continent was first known to Europeans as Terra Australis. The first European
settlements were initiated by the Dutch East India Company in 1606. By 1868, Britain had
sent more than 160,000 convicts to Australia and several of modern Australia's biggest
cities around the coast grew from the penal settlements. Eventually, the British crown
claimed the entire continent. The colonisers unfortunately treated the Kooris, the
indigenous population, with appalling brutality, which only worsened following the gold
rush and the first wave of voluntary migration that spilled into the interior, where
many Kooris had fled to |
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| The inaugural National Sorry Day was held in 1998 and has become an annual fixture on
the Australian calendar. The day is a symbolic event that heralds modern Australia's
willingness to face its inception. The didgeridoo and the boomerang have become modern
Australian icons. Tourists flock to the breathtaking, epic monolith of Uluru
(Ayers Rock) to watch the sun soak it in reds and oranges. This assimilation of
Aboriginal culture has both negatives and positives, and the aim must be to harmonise
rather than homogenise.
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