The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I Quotes

“Many convicts were bewildered by the first days of the voyage to Australia. Most had never seen the open sea until they boarded the convict ship, and few had travelled in a ship. And now, by sentence of the courts, they were about to begin one of the longest voyages any traveller could make.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia

“Nothing in the traditional life of Aborigines was more impressive than their practical knowledge. They were masters of their environment even though they could do little to change it.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia

“Whereas for thousands of years there was some prospect that the economic and social life of the Aborigines would be reshaped by the entry of immigrants from the Indonesian archipelago or New Guinea, the real reshaping was to be drastic. Whereas gardening could be grafted onto a semi-nomadic life, the economic activities and energies of England of 1800 would shatter the social and economic customs of the Aborigines. Tragically, the largest region of nomads in the world was now face-to-face with the island which had carried to new heights that settled, specialised existence that had arisen from the domesticating of plants and animals. People who could not boil water were confronted by the nation which had recently contrived the steam engine.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia

“We have long believed that during the time of the Aborigines' domination their landscape did not change. At times it changed dramatically. The basalt plains of that part of Victoria, which was later named Australia Felix, were violently affected by volcanoes. For most of the people living close to the ocean — and for some who had never seen it — a more shattering change was the rising of the sea and the drowning of their hunting grounds. Nothing in the short history of British Australia can match those physical changes.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia

“For eighty years convicts had been shipped to Australia, and a total of 163000 had set out on that voyage from which few returned. In the modern history of Europe there was rarely a planned deportation on a more ambitious scale until the era of Stalin and Hitler.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia’s People Vol. I: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia