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Understanding the ‘great mistakes’ of our history

November 03, 2006

DARoberts.thumb.jpgThe editors of a newly-published book, Great Mistakes of Australian History, say in their Introduction that it is “an act of national immaturity” to approach Australian history simply as a series of achievements, without recognising the “misjudgements, misconduct and missed opportunities” that are an inevitable part of any nation’s story.

Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts are historians based at the University of Queensland and The University of New England respectively. They say their book seeks to redress the balance in a cultural and political climate that encourages the writers and readers of Australian history to regard the mistakes of the past as “mere aberrations in a larger, more glorious story”.

They point out that “such mistakes have given us the rabbit, salinity, unsightly and unsound urban sprawl, social injustice and economic inequality, an abysmal history of race relations, ambiguous interactions with our Asian neighbours and, perhaps worst of all, far more dead bodies on the stage of Australian history than there should be”.

In 13 illuminating chapters by 14 Australian historians, the book explores the background and ramifications of all these mistakes – and more.

Popular demand for Great Mistakes of Australian History has been so great that the publishers – UNSW Press – reprinted it before its official launch. Bob Carr, former Premier of NSW and a champion of Australian history, launched the book at a function in Sydney yesterday evening.

Dr David Andrew Roberts (pictured here), who teaches colonial history at UNE, said his chapter, on “The Denial of Aboriginal Rights” – dealing with “a mistake that had its origins in the very first European encounters with the Australian coastline” – was an attempt “to set the record straight”. “Confusion and indecision about the status and rights of Aborigines within the new Australian colonies resulted in a history of dispossession and marginalisation that was instrumental in the process of Australian land settlement,” he said.

The 13 other authors include Richard Waterhouse, Bicentennial Professor of History at the University of Sydney (author of The Vision Splendid: a Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia), and Alan Atkinson, Professorial Fellow at UNE (author of The Europeans in Australia).

The principal “characters” of the book include William Shelley (the well-intentioned founder of the Parramatta Native Institution – the precursor of institutions and policies that led to the “stolen generations”), Burke and Wills (victims of the kind of “ill-conceived” schemes that were inconsistent with Australian realities and thus potentially fatal), the red fox and the cane toad (“grievous products of a failure to understand the delicacy of Australian ecosystems”), and Sydney’s Cahill Expressway (an “infamous example of urban blight”).

“By engaging with and understanding those errors,” the editors say, “we can better tackle the problems of the present and the challenges of the future.”

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 3, 2006 09:45 AM