The Botany Bay Medallion

‘The natives of the country [New Holland] live Tranquilly which is not disturb’d by the inequality of condition’. Lieutenant James Cook RN, HMS Endeavour Journal.

‘You are also with the consent of the natives to take possession of convenient situations in the country in the name of the King of Great  Britain, or if you find the country uninhabited take possession for His Majesty by setting up proper marks and inscriptions as first discoverers and possessors’. British Admiralty Instructions to Lieutenant James Cook RN, 1768. 

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‘An effective resolution will require what the British required as long ago ago as 1768 ‘the consent of the natives’. G. Nettheim, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Monograph No. 7, May 1994, ed. W. Sanders, Australian National University, Goanna Press, 1994

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1770 – August, Possession Island: Nevertheless Cook  ‘with[out] consent’ of its inhabitants, Australia’s  First Peoples, in the name of His Majesty King George III of England, marked a tree, ran up a flag, and named their territory New Wales. See: Captain Cook, Charles Green, John Harrison – Three Yorkshirmen Walked Into A Bar – Nevil Maskelyne

‘Military power was the most decisive fact about the early settlements; it was the frame within which everything else happened’. R. Connell and T.H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History, Documents, Narrative and Argument, 1980.

1788 – January,  Warrane – Sydney Cove: ” Began…At 6 am …on the 28th the disembarkation’ of a large amphibious army commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip RN.John Moore, The First Fleet Marines 1786-1792, Queensland University Press, 1986

Two hundred and forty-five (245) marines, two hundred (200) Royal Naval personnel, five hundred and seventy (570) male convicts ‘rationed as troops serving in the West Indies’ , twenty (20) officials, a lone male stowaway and four hundred and forty (440) merchant-seamen made up the fleet’s male complement, 1300 souls.See: ? Aside from Seagulls How Many White Birds Were On The Ground At Sydney Cove On 26 January 1788 – None

1788 – 6 February: ‘The day the convict women [189],  marine wives [31], children [29 free]… landed by rowing boats between 6am and 6 pm’. John Moore, The First Fleet Marines. ibid.

1788 – 7 February, Port Jackson: Governor Arthur Phillip RN, ‘using a form of words’ proclaimed the conquest – ‘effective occupation’ – of the island continent of New Holland, now Australia, for the British Empire.

‘It is impossible that… H.M. Government…should forget that the original aggression was ours’. Lord Jon Russell, to Sir George Gipps, 21 December 1838, Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Vol. XX

The winner-takes-all mindset of Britain’s ‘original aggression’ – laid down in 1788 – was set in stone during two (2) critical periods of absolute military rule between 1792-1795 and 1808-1810.

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‘The Old Privy Council decision in Cooper V Stuart [1889] was based on the factual errors that Australia was peacefully settled and that Aborigines were never in possession of the land’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, 1994

London – 1889, April 3: Lord Watson, Lord Fitzgerald, Lord Hobhouse, Lord MacNaghton, Sir William Grove, in Cooper V Stuart [1889] 14 AC, Privy Council of the United Kingdom, ruled: [13] ‘There was no land law existing in the Colony (New South Wales) at the time of its [peaceful] annexation to the Crown’.

Sydney – 1790, December 13: ‘Bring in six [6] of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay, or if that should be found impractical, to put that number to  death…cut off and bring in the heads of the slain’. Extract: General Orders, Governor Arthur Phillip to Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney, 13 December 1790, Historical Records of New South Wales.

Canberra – 1992 – June 3: The High Court of Australia, Mabo and Others V Queensland (No. 2) 1992, in a majority 6:I judgement, Justices Mason, Brennan, Dean, Gaudron, Toohey, Justice Dawson dissenting, found proposition [13]; ‘There was no land law…[that] Aborigines were never in possession of the land’ [was] wrongly decided’. Kercher. ibid.

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+++++++’Despite recognising native title, these judgements upheld the feudal basis of Australian land law. The High Court in Mabo V Queensland confirmed the feudal origins of Australia’s land law. The majority claimed that the Crown acquired ultimate title, known as ‘radical title’ of all Australian land upon colonisation’.  http.//anu.ed. ++++

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‘The Old Privy Council decision in Cooper V Stuart [1889] was based on the factual error that Australia was peacefully settled and that Aborigines were never in possession of the land. That case was also inconsistent with the common law decisions of the United States, Canada and New Zealand. In short, it was wrongly decided’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, Allen & Unwin, 1994

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