Random Note #185,831 — Captain Cook
Stan Grant and his ilk are being disingenuous and although he says the statue of Captain Cook should remain, it seems to the casual observer that having opened the batting on the conversation he’s dog whistling the indigenous activists to carry the debate further whilst he remains above the fray. Now watch for it to be taken up on The Drum and other ABC and academic fora.
Although Aborigines were here for fifty thousand years, everyone knows and understands the difference between the concept of the hunter gatherer who wanders across a land bridge and over hundreds or thousands of years and incrementally across the continuum of what we now know as Australia, and that of the government commissioned explorerer discoverer, who in Cooks case, deliberately set out from the other side of the world, sailing across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to test the rumour/theory of the existence of, and map the great south land if he could find it.
Having found it, and mapped the east coast, it must therefore be deemed that he discovered it.
Conversely, although Americans were the first to land on the moon it would be ridiculous to suggest they discovered it. Call to end ‘great silence’