Australian Knowledge

No, it's a general lack of thirst for knowledge!

Disco
Well done my boy , now I feel better too, except you forgot a state....poor old disconnected Tassie, does that mean you would be a loser on the show ???? lol

Doug,
Taswegians don't count, some maps have been known to leave Tassie of the map entirely. (Said with tongue firmly planted in cheek)
The only time Tassie counts is in an election, unlike WA, where we know the result before the polls have closed so our votes don't matter.

Disco

Taswegians don't count, some maps have been known to leave Tassie of the map entirely. (Said with tongue firmly planted in cheek)

That's called a Brazilian isn't it????

Disco driver

I agree with some of what you have said - people in most cities don't know what goes on outside.

I on the other hand hate cities and the best view of a city is in the rear vision mirror. I would prefer the city dwellers to stay there and leave the rest of the country for the likes of me.

I don't agree with your bit about SA and NT.

Where do you reside?

Tjilpi

Disco Driver, are you refering to the people that live in Canberra by choice or the people that blokes like you send here?

Well I'm not going to kick anyone, or any State.

I have been fortunate to be able to claim I've been to all States and love them all for their own specific reasons and attractions.

WA I can only claim familiarity with the south west corner of the State, but I'm working on rectifying that. Was planning a trek along the Tanami Track but when we were ready to leave the Alice, the track was closed.

In fact, I will expand the horizon somewhat and include New Zealand. A beautiful country with people that have a similar sense of humour to us Aussies.

Whether we are visiting the cities, or the great outdoors, we truly live in the best part of the world, in my opinion. Love it!, love it!, love it!

Disco Driver
disco driver posted this followup

Doug,
Taswegians don't count, some maps have been known to leave Tassie of the map entirely. (Said with tongue firmly planted in cheek)

Hey
ozdragon, some people work overseas and live in Australia, dont you know this happens, get with it mate, any kid will tell you that, alot of kids travel the outback too

seven.

ozdragon.

Its a big world out there. I travelled and worked in most states of Australia and also travelled a lot of the world for work as well.
I still travel Australia when I'm home as well. I can say from experience Australia is the best place on earth, even if we do have some narrow minded people.

Robert

It's called expanding your horizon's ozdragon, the world doesn't end at our coastline.

I have travelled heaps throughout the world over the past 10 years (31 now) as I was curious to see what else is out there and how other people do things etc. and I reckon I'm a much more complete/open-eyed individual for it.
In comparison I have seen very little of Australia, therefore I would probably fall into the category of they people you describe.

My reasoning for doing it this way is that I can always see Australia, in any time frame I want and whenever I want. Conversely, the average person I think (from my perspective) only has a relatively small window of time to travel 'string free' when you're young as once your working career/family/various other commitments come into place it's very hard to make the time to go and travel at your will. The other option of course is to travel (if that's what you want of course) when career/family etc. aren't so big in your life (retirement). If you're loaded of course you can go whenever you like ;)

I think you will find this is how many of the young people that give you the sh%^'s think.

Well said Gav99x.

You got that right we can all see Australia anytime, but its a lot hard to get to the rest of the world. especially once you have kids and a career.
That attitude reminds me of people in some of the American southern states who are lucky if they travel to the next county.
But he will never know that cause he will never go. I really feel sorry for people like that.

Rob

Peter,

Sometimes it's good therapy to travel overseas and broaden ones outlook on life.

If nothing else, it helps remove the lethargy we sometimes have and helps us recognise more easily how bloody good we have it in Australia, even with the cost of fuel and Government taxes and bloody Telstra. (oops, that's another story)

Ozdragon

I too fit into the category of giving you the bleep s. Like has been said above, the world is a big and diverse place. People want to see it while they can.

Once people get older and have a responsibility to the family they're not going to travel for 36 hours on a dirty Indian train only to find out that the train will no longer go to it's destination, or board a bus run by by smugglers, or sleep at a train station because there is no available accommodation, or buy water that might give them diorhea (sp?), or visit places where they can't communicate and effectively put their safety in the hands of some stranger.

Oh. did I mention that to some overseas places it's a lot cheaper to travel then within Australia. On one 4 week trip we spent $25 per person per day. Try travelling on that type of budget in Aus.

So while you may have no urge to see other places, don't rubbish people's decision to see a little more of the world then what you think is necessary.

Australia is a fantastic place, I know, I've been elsewhere.

Well for my 2 cents I'd rather spend $8000 on an outback trip than spend $1000 sipping cocktails in Bali - Anyday!!

Also, I can sip cocktails by one of the best beaches in Australia, only 1200 metres from my front door - for free!!!

And that is your choice and you shouldn't be crucified for it.

Unfortunately most young people today don't have that choice. Loving Australia and seeing the world are not mutually exclusive actions.

Never been to Bali so can't comment.

Quite possibly Equinox, but maybe you should compare apples with apples.

What about spending $1000 travelling around Egypt by yourself for a month for instance? To me this would be a more comparable type of trip.

I've done this a couple of times, and can't recommend it enough.

Can't vouch for the $8k outback trip, but I will be doing it in the future I can assure you - then I'll be able to genuinely compare both experiences.

probably cos there isn't a lot........:-)

tic

Thanks for refreshing the old memory, yeh I had Social Studies too.

Doug

We still had social studies in the '80s too.

personally I blame the telly, american garbage in particular. Did you know some people think what they see on an american show is representative of what happens in similar situations in australia? that's why some people call 911 in an emergency.

NickR

My young fella in grade 4 [Qld] are learning about the 1st Fleet , thing is that nowadays due to TV / internet ect ect the world is a much "smaller" place .ergo our Australia with its comparativly small population becomes less significant in the world scheme ,, our history if we discount our aboriginal cousins only equals a pimple on the worlds bum.

Alloy
So you reackon the world is small or gotten smaller , hey listen I know what you mean but when it comes to being small you check this out....lol

members.westnet.com.au/dtilley/planets.htm

Was sent these last night for me to check out , he knows my interests

Doug

Hi Robin
We have to keep these pleasures to our selves and close family, otherwise
we might have a traffic jam, we have been 4x4 ing since 1981 and still havent
seen it all.

Cheers
Daza

IMPOSSIBLE

"IMPOSSIBLE" ????

That's amazing, I thought that I was the only one that knew everything!

Steve
I know where your comiing from, but I too am guilty of going overseas, twice to USA but then it wasn't exactly as a tourist in the sense of the word,but did see some interesting things along the way, This of course was back ib 98 and 00 and I have seem most of our country but still need to see more yet, CSR and the Cape, I only just went out of my way to visit a piddling little meteor crater of 27 meters but I enjoyed that as much as one would enjoy goint to Custers Last Stand or the Empire State , but I would like to go back again because I did miss this [ re link ] and it to me would be better than the Grand Canyon, if your on Dial up it might take a while , set it to full size if windows fits it to screen size.

http://members.westnet.com.au/dtilley/Meteor_Crater_Panorama.jpg

As for the CSR i have been thinking about it, planning for it , for the last 6 years and this year I want to do it , and need to get a job that pays the way to the North then just amble home via the CSR, Have to hurry up before the old Troopy is worn out.

Doug

Oh so we don't have a great wall .......

LOL...unfortunately not for some.

Boer

Wrong

bugger wrong button.

AUSTRALIAN MILITARY HISTORY

Maori Wars

China

Sudan

Boer War

Gallipoli

World War I

World War II

Korean War

Vietnam

Peacekeepers

Timor

Gulf-Afghanistan-Iraq

The Royal Australian Regiment

Hold on Redback

You said Australian born soldier [bit hard on Australian born sailors ] , you didn't say serving in an Australian contingent . Starting with First Fleeters , and adding about 12 years for boy soldiers , it is almost certain that Australian born soldiers were active in English service long before the Moari war [ 1860 ] .

A soldier is a soldier doesn't matter what service he's in, and besides only proving a point, not everyone knows everything about our history or locations or whatever.

As a group we may know alot, but as indivduals we know little.

My apologies to those in the Navy.

Stay safe wherever you may be!!!!!

Baz.

Good question redback.

Wasn't Flinders on his return to England the promoter of the term Australia?
Before then, it would have been NSW?

Australia as a term wasn't common usage until the mid to late 19th century?
And was promoted as a concept for the 30 years before federation by the federation movement.

And Australia as a country didn't exist until 1901, so most soldiers would have considered themselves Victorian, or from NSW.

But could 'Australians' have fought in Crimea as part of British units?
Or the the Sudan conflict with Kitchener?
Or the pirate wars of South east Asia and the boxer rebellion?
Or the north west frontier during the Russian expansion into Afghanistan in the mid 19th century?

So what do you class as a war or a conflict? :o)))).

Well maybe i should have worded it differantly, say first soldiers born in Australia as we know it now to lose the lives in battle.

I think around the times of the Moari wars there would have been not many australian born men serving in the british forces here as most were considered bad and corupt, the NSW Corp would have been the most prevelent at that time.

This was a time when the colony of NSW Victoria and New Zealand was governed by the NSW governer, and at the time i think it was Bligh, but i could be wrong.

I think we were colonials right up to and after the first world war.

Redback,

Good point.

I found your original question interesting, since in some ways it starts the point at which we define what is Australian. Something I hadn't thought about before.

At the time, no one would have considered themselves Australian, but colonial as you say. However, from my poor knowledge of Australian history, there was a group of people who were Australian born who found they were better adapted to living and settling this land. Better put European in there. The aboriginal population were already living well of the land, and were ignored by the Europeans at their own cost.

Considering the first free settlers didn't arrive until 1793, and the colony at Sydney opened for free settlement in 1823, it would not have been until the 1850s or 1860s that there would have a number of ozzie born people. The first freed convicts started settling land in the 1820s.

Population in Oz in the early 1820s was about 30,000. By the mid 1860s, with Perth starting in 1827, and Adelaide not long after, the population was about 1 million.

Big worry for me is our children.
My wife is a primary school teacher, and loves Aussie history and geography. She had to fill in for a teacher in grade 5, so did her usual trick and had a quiz. A lot of students didn't even know the names of the state capitals. Let alone the name of the rivers (like Darling and Murray), big concern.

As aa great man once said, we ignore history at our own peril, since we will repeat the mistakes made by earlier generations.

Last night on Temptation the 3 contestant didn't know Lawrence Hargraves was on the old $20 note, and that was only one of the many clues they got.

Too many overseas influences and computer games with american accents and spelling bombarding kids here i would say, but hopefully they will come around as they get older as we did.

I remember learning more about Europe and America when i was at school.

Another saying "the grass is always greener on the otherside of the fence"

Baz.

And this was different when you were young no doubt?

Younger folk may not be able to tell you when Cook 'discovered' Australia, but they will probably tell you he did it behind a long line of Dutch, French, Macassans and maybe even Chinese. They may even be able to tell you that Australia had a history before Cook's arrival and that of the first fleet.

Honestly, I don't know where sweeping generalisations about the youth of today come from. My children (year 2 and 5) are getting a far better grounding in grammar, spelling, sentence construction and the fundamentals of writing than I ever did.

Anyone who was educated in the 70s and 80s (at least in NSW), needs to take a long hard look before slinging off about declining standards. Talk about a stolen generation, does anybody remember how grammar fundamentals were completely dropped during that time by the Chardonnay sipping set who thought it more important to experiment with 'mamby pamby' educational theories than to teach the fundamentals of grammar?

My kids attend a public school and I have to say that there is more rigour in the way they are taught (maths and English particularly) than I ever had. Hey, they even study some way out stuff like Aboriginal history as well (pretty limited in my day).

And yes, they learn about events and countries other than ours. How can you understand Australia if you don't understand its place in the world? We travelled with them for 6 months last year around Australia, and we all learnt an enormous amount. But I hope that there interests and education will be heaps broader than mine as they grow.

Matt.

From Memory (no googling) I believe it was William Janz who discovered the western coast of Cape York Penninsular and therefore Australia. (First descipheral discovery anyway).

The Indonesions have been coming here and trading with the Aborigines for centries before any white explorers even thought of coming this far south, in fact i wouldn't rule out that the Maori hadn't been here in the time they have been in NZ.

Think about La Perouse, he sailed into Botany Bay 3 days before Cook, he just did't stay to claim it for France, we could of been a french speeking nation.

The fact is i think we are forgetting when we were kids, i'll bet you were thinking of other matters other than who discovered Australia, i know i was, i probably knew it at the time but didn't care, as i think that's how it is and will be for most kids.

Baz.

The teachers only let them spell that way, because they don't know either!

That doesn't happen at my two daughters school, they are taught the correct spelling from the start so shaker may well be correct.

? ? ? ? ? Here we are , I posted about something on TV in March 2007 and you guys are rattling on about something over 500 bloody years ago , geez time flies eh.

lmao. but as long as we're all learning I don't mind , .

Doug

Doug,

Too true. It is one of the reasons I don't think that posts on here should be categorised. They rarely follow the original topic, but there is often a gem buried in there somewhere.

Matt