Aboriginal Australians(1)

A documentary about the 1st and indigenous people of the landmass called Australia

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Before the dreaming, the Australian continent was a flat featureless place, devoid of life.

Then giant beings came down from the sky,

came from across the sea and emerged from within the Earth.

With their arrival, the dreaming began and life was born.

In the north of Australia, the Junkawa Sisters gave birth to humanity.

In central Australia, Itakawara broke the marriage laws

and as punishment, was turned into stone forever, entombed in the landscape.

On the east coast, Baiame shaped the landscape

and when his work was complete,

he stepped on to a mountain and back into the sky.

As they moved across the land,

their giant bodies shaped the Earth,

creating rivers and mountain ranges.

In everything they touched, they left their essence

making the landscape sacred to those who honour the dreaming.

The first Australians.

If you think about the ancient civilizations that Europeans look to

such as the dynasties of the Pharoahs in Egypt,

then even they are young compared to the period when humans were coming to Australia.

The first Australians numbered more than 250 tribes,

each with their own language, laws and territorial boundaries.

A civilization encompassing the entire continent.

We've had this debate about Australia was a terra nullius

and it was a wasted landscape,

and people hadn't used it and hadn't farmed it.

They have discovered that in fact, it's probably supported about 1.6 billion lives

and that's how productive Aboriginal people were able to make this part of the Earth

which has the most irregular and unreliable rainfall

and the driest continent on Earth.

80,000 years, 100,000 years,

it doesn't matter whether it's 60,000 years, it's an incredible length of time.

It's the longest living civilization Earth

and if you can't learn something from a people that successful,

then you're really defying your own intelligence.

Just over 200 years ago, without warning, strangers arrive.

They appear on the east coast at a place called Warang.

The strangers name it Sydney.

They're about to come face-to-face with the first Australians.

Bennelong, a young American,

who spends his days on the beach, will become the toast of English society.

Pemulroy will reject diplomacy and will declare the first war on Australian soil

Believing that he cannot be killed by firearms,

Windradyne will also become a wanted man

when his family is murdered over a handful of potatoes.

This is the story of the first Australians

and the events that shape the nation when the strangers came to stay.

It's impossible not to have hoped that there'd be some sort

of evolution of a society which was tolerant of difference,

but which sustained everyone.

It is a summer's night on the 25th January, 1788.

Eleven giant ships enter the harbour.

On board are over 1300 people.

More than half are convicts, the rest are soldiers.

The people on board are ordered to remain there until dawn.

They've traveled for nearly 8 months from England to this unknown land.

Around the harbour, the first Australians light fires

and they yell from their canoes for these apparitions to go away.

They thought they was the Devil when they landed first.

They did not know what to make of them.

When they saw them going up the masts,

they thought they was possums, Marut.

Gamadelpivo

At first light, the order is given for the convict men and women to disembark.

For Aboroginal people, can you imagine, suddenly there are 11 ships,

with these strange people wearing clothes.

Funny hats, they have guns.

What are these people up to? Why are they here?

How long are they going to stay?

Why did they come to my country? Why don't they go somewhere else?

Are they spirits? Very strange.

There's this very curious and very touching attempt to come together and to comprehend.

So you have extraordinary scenes within two or three days of landing of Britishers and Aborogines dancing together.

29 January, 1788

They pointed with their sticks to the boat landing place

and met us in the most cheerful manner.

Shouting and dancing, these people mixed with ours and all hands danced together.

William Bradley, first lieutenant.

And all we've got to go on are the paintings done

by a young naval lieutenant called Bradley.

And he has these enchanting paintings of redcoats

and aboriginal men, indeed, dancing together.

They're hand in hand,they seem to be dancing.

A sort of playground encounter, if you like,

when you're trying to check each other out.

The first Australians can't work out these first visitors are men or women

as their clothing covers them like a strange skin.

Finally, an officer is challenged to submit to the country's very first immigration procedure.

He has a wig, he has leotards on.

THey ask him to take his pants off,

which he declined and made a sailor do it.

Arthur Philip, captain of the first fleet, leads the newcomers ashore.

After an unremarkable career of 30 years in the navy,

he is dragged from retirement and appointed goverenor of a place nearly sixty times the size of England.

Governor Philip was in a rather unique situation when he came to Sydney,

because he had one of his front teeth missing

and it was the same tooth that was knocked out during the male initiation ceremony.

On my showing them that I lacked a front tooth,

it occasioned a general clamour, and I thought it gave me some little merit in their opinion.

Arthur Philip, Governor.

The local people would have thought here is...