Brian Ross
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Belgarion wrote on Jun 16 th, 2021 at 2:37pm: I have here just one of the references that shows that Pascoe misrepresented the journals of early explorers to suit his agenda. I will also post part of it so those who remain in denial by not following the references can confront reality: https://australianhistory972829073.wordpress.com/2019/11/14/bruce-pascoe-what-di...Pascoe loves to quote the explorer Charles Sturt. Incorrectly in most cases. Check to see what Pascoe made up from just this small section of Sturt’s journal.
Charles Sturt wrote – “…. however, we reached the hill soon after the natives had gone over it, and on gaining the summit were hailed with a deafening shout by 3 or 400 natives, who were assembled in the flat below. I do not know, that my desire to see the savage in his wild state, was ever more gratified than on this occasion, for I had never before come so suddenly upon so large a party. The scene was one of the most animated description, and was rendered still more striking from the circumstance of the native huts, at which there were a number of women and children, occupying the whole crest of a long piece of rising ground at the opposite side of the flat.”
Pascoe changes the number of people and adds in a bit of drama, by inventing the story that the explorers were “saved from death”, and he throws in a bit more fiction by including harvesting grain. He says –
Version 1. “Charles Sturt’s exploration party of 1844 was saved from death when it chanced upon four hundred Aboriginal people harvesting grain on the Warburton River (South Australia),”
Version 2. “There were nearly 1000 people living there, in this little model community with timber and thatch houses, beautiful dwellings, which Sturt describes quite well.” https://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:160504/Kelly.pdf
Sturt says. “I checked my horse for a short time on the top of the sand hill, and gazed on the assemblage of agitated figures below me, covering so small a space that I could have enclosed the whole under a casting net, and then quietly rode down into the flat, followed by Mr. Stuart and my men, to one of whom I gave my horse when I dismounted, and then walked to the natives, by whom Mr. Stuart and myself were immediately surrounded. Had these people been of an unfriendly temper, we could not by any possibility have escaped them, for our horses could not have broken into a canter to save our lives or their own. We were therefore wholly in their power, although happily for us perhaps, they were not aware of it; but, so far from exhibiting any unkind feeling, they treated us with genuine hospitality, and we might certainly have commanded whatever they had.”
Pascoe adds in his drama and says – “They’ve eaten all their horses but one. They’ve got no water, they’ve got no food, they’re dying. They climb a sand dune and look down. Sturt can hardly see by this stage, but they’re accosted by 1000 Aboriginal people ….. And so Sturt writes that if those people had been aggressive to him that they could have done nothing, because the horse they had left couldn’t have run to save its life and they couldn’t have walked to save their lives. They were at the mercy of these people who came up and grabbed hold of them, virtually carried them down to the bottom of the dune.” https://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:160504/Kelly.pdf
Sturt wrote. “Several of them brought us large troughs of water, and when we had taken a little, held them up for our horses to drink; an instance of nerve that is very remarkable, for I am quite sure that no white man, (having never seen or heard of a horse before, and with the natural apprehension the first sight of such an animal would create,) would deliberately have walked up to what must have appeared to them most formidable brutes, and placing the troughs they carried against their breast, have allowed the horses to drink, with their noses almost touching them.”
This is just a small sample. Plenty of others for those who care to look. Pascoe has been thoroughly discredited. Good, good, some meat on the bone of an argument. Excellent. Finally someone who has gasped the gist of Pascoe's argument and addressed it. Great. Unfortunately, I think a lot of it is about the use of words, rather than the substance of what Pascoe said that Sturt reported. Sturt reported a large number of Indigenous Australians in one small area. They apparently had dwellings ("huts/houses") and a water source. You really can't sustain a large number of people without some form of agriculture. What kind? It isn't mentioned, except by Pascoe. Funny that, hey?
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