topic Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing in Community Spirit

Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

icyfroth — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 20:39:30 GMT

Ahead of Australia Day celebrations, graffiti vandals have sprayed offensive slogans at historic sites in Sydney and Melbourne.

An eight kilometre stretch along Botany Bay has been targeted, including a park where dozens will become Australian citizens on Sunday.

It is Australia Day attacked at a place where white Australians first sailed into Sydney more than two centuries ago.

Today it was covered with angry messages directed at their descendants.

Graffiti was sprayed along the shoreline of Botany Bay two days before the country's national day of celebration.

Local families who've planned Australian Day parties here are outraged.

Rockdale mayor Shane O’Brien said: “To attack public and private property does nothing for the cause of Aboriginal people.”

The trail of graffiti stretched kilometres from Brighton Le Sands, through Cook Park to Dolls Point.

Council workers have spent the day scrubbing off and spraying over the offensive messages.

Political stickers and posters were also left on signs, toilet blocks, seawall and businesses.

Link to Article And Video

An 8 km stretch from Brighton-Le-Sands to Dolls point! Along with Cpt. Cooks Cottage in Melb, It looks like a well orchestrated attack.

Did Aboriginal groups do it?

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

i-need-a-martini — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 21:27:12 GMT

I doubt if it is indigenous groups. More likely to be some fringe anarchist bunch.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

icyfroth — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 04:27:02 GMT

But blame it on the indiginous groups?

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

bright.ton42 — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 09:49:12 GMT

Just wondering why you doubt it? Captain Cook's cottage here in Melbourne has been defaced overnight, and aboriginal groups are being blamed for it. I don't believe it's racist to say that that is quite possible.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

poddster — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 10:02:51 GMT

If you notice the colours of the paint used you might find that there is a subliminal link to the perpetrators.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

boris1gary — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 10:16:56 GMT

looks grey on my screen, ????????

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

nevynreally — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 10:21:43 GMT

@poddster wrote:
If you notice the colours of the paint used you might find that there is a subliminal link to the perpetrators.

And some aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

spotweldersfriend — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 10:27:39 GMT

They can spell though,so our education system's in good shape.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

boris1gary — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 10:36:10 GMT

so does this mean that some literate but maybe a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic grey people did it?

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

colic2bullsgirlore — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 20:20:59 GMT

The **bleepers** have been at it for 1000's of years

.... I wish they would tell us where all the other sites are so we can get those cleaned up as well.............

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_rock_engravings

Sydney rock engravings are a form of Australian Aboriginal Rock Art consisting of carefully drawn images of people, animals, or symbols, in the sandstone around Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Many thousands of such engravings are known to exist in the Sydney region, although the locations of most are not publicised to prevent damage by vandalism, and to retain their sanctity, as they are still regarded as sacred sites by Indigenous Australians.

The Sydney engravings are of a style known as "simple figurative", which conventional archaeology dates to the last 5000 years.

Other engravings show European sailing ships, and so cannot be more than about 200 years old. The dates therefore

range from 5000 to 200 years ago.

It is likely that some of the freshest engravings represent the later part of that time range, whilst the most worn represent

the earliest part.

However, the situation is complicated by the fact that the engravings were sometimes "re-grooved" during ceremonies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australian_art

Graffiti and other destructive influences

Many culturally significant sites of Aboriginal rock paintings have been gradually desecrated and destroyed by

encroachment of early settlers and modern-day visitors.

This includes the destruction of art by clearing and construction work, erosion caused by excessive touching of sites, and graffiti.

Many sites now belonging to National Parks have to be strictly monitored by rangers, or closed off to the public permanently.

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/arts/why-australias-aboriginal-rock-art-will-disappear

Some non-Indigenous people tried to preserve Aboriginal rock art in painting the grooves with white paint (see image below). This act compares to desecration because rock engravings usually mark spiritual sites of great significance to Aboriginal people. When an engraving near Bondi Beach in Sydney was re-grooved in 1967 the Aboriginal community was divided as to whether this was a rightful act or not.

Grooves of an Aboriginal rock engraving painted in white. This is a weak and disrespectful act by non-Indigenous people trying to make visible and preserve an urban Aboriginal rock engraving.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

colic2bullsgirlore — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 20:28:16 GMT

But....that's progress for you

Intentional destruction

Aboriginal sites are allowed to be ‘disturbed’ or destroyed by state governments.

Between 2005 and 2009 the NSW government approved 541 permits to destroy or disturb Aboriginal heritage sites

Not a single application to do so was rejected in the first 10 months of 2008.

Between June 2012 and June 2013, the NSW Office of the Environment and Heritage – the organisation that is meant to be protecting Aboriginal heritage – considered 99 applications to destroy Aboriginal heritage and culture and all 99 applications that it considered were approved.

The Office claims, however, that only half of the applications reach this final step.

In 2009 a Tasmanian road project worth $164 million Australian dollars threatened to destroy “thousands of stone

tools, quarry sites and campsites” and possibly several burial sites.

Work began before community consultations were completed.

When the National Parks and Wildlife Act was enacted in 2001, last-minute lobbying by mining and agriculture

interests prevented amendments that would have created a stricter protection regime for Aboriginal sites.

"We've got a system which is basically the managed destruction of Aboriginal heritage."

—David Shoebridge, NSW Greens MP

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

colic2bullsgirlore — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 20:36:11 GMT

I wonder why we do not read of the obverse situation very much in the mainstream media????? .... It happens quite often... does not even have to coincide with a special date Vandalism

Time is not the only danger Aboriginal rock art is facing. Crude graffiti scratched into rocks bearing thousand-year-old images, construction camps built near sacred sites and tourists (and locals) treading on rock art sites contribute to the decay of sites of priceless Aboriginal history.

When Rachel Perkins scouted locations for her extraordinary series First Australians she had to abandon Bull Cave due to graffiti.

“For instance, Bull Cave in Camden, down in Dharawal country. We went to film there because that was where the First Fleet’s cattle escaped and they wandered down south and they went into Dharawal country and the Dharawal people painted this extraordinary image of this massive bull on the cave wall.

It is one of the first pieces of contact art, a really important site. We went down there to film and of course, someone has spray painted across it in red letters:

‘This is bull**bleep**’ and painted a big **bleep** across it, so of course we can’t film there.”

Aboriginal charcoal rock art destroyed by graffiti. Bull Cave, Campbelltown, NSW. Photo: Les Bursill

Other sites damaged by vandals include Red Hand Cave in the Blue Mountains (which now has been completely covered by perspex and bars), Bunjil Cave in Garriwerd, the Grampians (now protected by a metal cage), rock art at Mutitjulu waterhole at Uluru (Ayers Rock) and rock engravings in Darkinjung National Park which were destroyed by someone unloading wet cement onto it.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

colic2bullsgirlore — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:03:11 GMT

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/blasting-the-colonial-past/571/

SOME ROCK ART carries within it the meaning of ancient Aboriginal law, but now its survival depends on the laws the

colonisers imported from Britain.

“Although various forms of legislation make it an offence to disturb a rock-art site this has not stopped a rise in graffiti,

vandalism, and damage from development,”

Archaeologist and rock art specialist Wayne Brennan examines a fire-damaged and graffiti-covered rock-art site in the

Blue Mountains.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

darksideofthemoon — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:09:16 GMT

There's nothing I can say to this that wouldn't earn me a month in eBali

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

i-need-a-martini — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:42:01 GMT

@bright.ton42 wrote:
Just wondering why you doubt it? Captain Cook's cottage here in Melbourne has been defaced overnight, and aboriginal groups are being blamed for it. I don't believe it's racist to say that that is quite possible.

Of course indigenous people are being blamed for it. Aussies like to point the finger at the obvious before engaging their brain.

But I doubt it because exactly the same thing happened last year (same message, same location) and a (non-indigenous) fringe group claimed responsibility. I can't remember who they were but they were the kind that protests anything. For all I know that group might have indigenous members but it isn't an orchestrated campaign by an indigenous group making a statement.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

icyfroth — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 23:27:55 GMT

I hate graffiti with a passion, and find it particularly abhorrent on historic and and sacred sites such as you've shown, Colics.

I suspect the attack in Melbourne and Sydney was done by a radical partisan group with an anti- white Australian agenda in the name of the Aboriginal cause.

I doubt however, that we'll ever find out. If these ppl are known to police, I don't think it will ever be made public.

Re: Australia Day Graffiti At Site Of First Landing

bright.ton42 — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 01:08:18 GMT

Just heard on the news that there is CCT footage at Captain Cook's cottage and it is expected this will

reveal who did it. I hope so , so that that will be clarified.