For those of you who don’t remember, we capped off March in spectacularly disheartening fashion after Sydney’s Daily Telegraph accused the University of NSW of “whitewashing” Australian history.
Apparently, the Tele was incensed by the fact that UNSW has a set of language guidelines for students and teachers, suggesting they avoid referring to Captain Cook as the person who “discovered” Australia.
In other words, accurately describe history. As most of us know, Cook arrived in Australia well after the land’s Indigenous population as well as Dutch navigators and traders from Indonesia, India, and China.
Still, the Tele couldn’t fathom how any of this means Captain Cook isn’t the person who discovered Australia and wrote a damning editorial, lambasting UNSW for forcing students to claim he ‘invaded’ Australia.
Again, the fact that they didn’t (they simply suggested he be referred to as “the first Englishman to map the east coast of ‘New Holland’”) wasn’t the point. Instead, we all distracted ourselves with a game of ‘Invasion or Discovery?’
The thing is, as Australian rapper Briggs and singer Thelma Plum will tell you, there’s not much of a debate. Appearing recently on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, Briggs explained why Cook did, in fact, invade Australia.
