Lushington D. Brady: Do You Want the Narratives of Aus History or the Facts? Pt 2

In the previous post, I looked at how Australian history, in the popular imagination and in academic circles, is dominated by narratives that are too often spun out of little but outraged assertion and fanciful interpretation. On the other hand, careful examination of primary sources, many of which are only now being put into easy public access, tells a very different story.

There are, in particular, three dominant narratives of Australian history, as taught in Australian schools:

Lushington D. Brady: Do You Want the Narratives of Aus History or the Facts? Pt 1.

Academic historians are an odd bunch. Especially in Australia. They’re all too ready to write up fairy-stories and garbled oral legends as “history”, but not much interested, it seems, in actual, documented, primary sources. For instance, peer-reviewed Australian journals cite the “memories” of an Aboriginal stockman in the Northern Territory, telling of how Ned Kelly fought Captain Cook to protect Aborigines, as the serious stuff of academic history. I kid you not.

When Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu claimed to have examined primary sources to prove that Aborigines lived in large towns, built vast grain storages and waterworks and invented democracy, almost no academic historians spoke up to point out that he was talking a pile of dingo poo. On the contrary, he was appointed to a cushy academic position and his ludicrous book deposited in school libraries and reading lists across Australia.