Tony Abbott's says..The first lot of Australians were chosen by

[izabsmiling]

...... the finest judges in England

http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/News/tabid/94/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/9041/Remarks-at-City-of-Holdfast-Bay-Australia-Day-Awards-and-Citizenship-Ceremony-Adelaide.aspx

Remarks at City of Holdfast Bay Australia Day Awards and Citizenship Ceremony, Adelaide

  Posted on Saturday, 26 January 2013

[the_great_she_elephant]

The first 'Bogeymen' migrants were Irish Catholics who were going to overrun the country and have us all languishing beneath the yoke of Rome. A quick skim through newspapers of the mid 19th century will turn up umpteen articles and letters moaning  about them coming over here with their old quarrels and prejudices and undermining our Anglo-Saxon culture.

[izabsmiling]

Some of my family claim that our Irish ancestors where the first to farm in an area of Victoria.It isn't the case.

http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/land-exploration/land-management/indigenous-land-use

Indigenous land use

Before European settlement, the area we now call 'Victoria' was divided into as many as 32 different Indigenous language groups.

These groups (often referred to as 'tribes') spoke different languages, built different types of housing and practised different types of farming. Like the Europeans who were to follow, the Indigenous population manipulated the environment to their own ends.

When Major Thomas Mitchell first made his way through the Port Phillip district in winter of 1836 he was struck by how much some of the landscape resembled Europe. Australia’s Indigenous people had shaped the land:

The world of the Australians was as moulded by conscious human action as were the hedgerowed fields of England. If one used the plough and the iron axe to shape their world, the other used fire and the stone axe.

- Robert Kenny

Source

In recent years archaeologists have uncovered just how sophisticated the farming practices employed by some Indigenous groups in Victoria were. The Gunditjmara people, in particular, engineered and constructed a sophisticated system in the Lake Condah region. This system was used to farm huge quantities of eel, enough to feed up to 10,000 people. According to archaeologist, Heather Builth:

The Gunditjmara weren’t just catching eels, their whole society was based around eels…The villages associated with the Lake Condah fish farm…were actually more like company towns, with dwellings built to house the people who worked the farms. It’s like you have your council houses for the factory. That’s what was going on here.

- Heather Builth

Source

In Western or European thinking traditions, societies become more 'sophisticated' when they have a surplus of food. People can devote more time to devote to things other than just basic survival, including more elaborate housing.

Dawson points out that the residences were formed with a frame of stouts limbs, tall enough for a person to stand upright in and that this dome-shaped frame was clad in grass and covered over with turf, “like slates on a roof”. He is at pains to demonstrate that these were strong and comfortable abodes...

- Ray Madden

Source

The Gunditjmara were living on some of the most fertile land in the Port Phillip district, land that the European settlers wanted. The Eumeralla Wars that ensued were a series of armed conflicts that were recently acknowledged by a High Court decision that recognised the rights and interests of the Gunditjmara over 140,000 hectares of land around Portland and Port Fairy.

[i-need-a-martini]

Not in my neighbourhood.

Not in my neighbourhood what?

Elephant - we have ALWAYS moaned about whatever new wave of migrants are here at the moment.

And of course once we became more, ahem,  welcoming after the war we have had decade after decade of moaning. The post war immigrants in the 50s and early 60's were bringing with them the violence and poverty of Europe to drag our Anglo culture down. Then the 70's it was the Slavic countries coming out bringing their uncouth ways with them. Then in the 80's and 90's we had the Middle east  Maronites and the start of the Asian migration where we all moaned they were going to assimilate too much and we would all have asian looking eyes in the not to distant future.

And guess what? We survived ALL of this without the country falling for the predictions of where it was heading. My Italian family is not all in gaol because violence runs in our veins and we all murder our own kin. I don't have asian features. I haven't become uncivil from mixing with slavic races. 😄

And now we have the current generation of immigrants -  Muslims, Indians and Africans and we are still moaning about violence and how the whole country is going to turn Islam.

A storm waiting to blow over with the next wave of immigration me thinks...

[katydidthat]

A few years ago, I invited some Muslim friends for Christmas dinner.  Three adults, 2 women, 1 man, 2 kids. I cooked turkey, roast potatoes, other roast veg, gravy, some green vegies, and a large serving bowl of rice salad (just to be sure, to be sure), and dessert.  We had a Christmas tree, decorations, presents, crackers, the works.  

It was one of my favourite dinner parties, ever.  

We sat round the table and ate and talked and ate and talked.  We discussed religion, sex, and politics.  We laughed our heads off.  It was the first time they'd tasted turkey.  

They were (and are) delightful, tax-paying, contributing, friendly people ... and "your average Australians".  

[meh_too]

Not in my neighbourhood.

I thought it was pretty clear, let me spell it out to you - the indigenous and the anglos live in harmony in my neighbourhood, where it is predominently indigenous. Its not an issue with the families that live here, but it appears to be an issue with you.