Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
You as in: "You damn yankees!"
Real History Vs. Percieved History
- Thread starter Mr. Dictator
- Start date
Uncle Anton
Lighthorseman
A quick one many Aussies are guilty of after watching Peter Weir's "Gallipoli" and taking it at face value....
During the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, specifically during the battles for Sari Bair in August, the 3rd Light Horse Brigade's assault at "The Nek" wasn't in support of a British attack at Suvla Bay... it was actually in support of a New Zealand attack at Chunuk Bair (further up the ridge line to the east), and contrary to the history that the film has ingrained in a lot of Aussies, the futile attacks weren't callously ordered by inept British commanders, but actually by inept Australian ones.... J.M. Antill and F.G Hughes the guilty parties.
It became somewhat symbolic in Australian popular culture of a percieved British callousness towards Australian lifeblood in that conflict - the facts were however that that particular balls-up was entirely "homemade" and if anything the Brits (or more accurately, Welsh) suffered quite badly trying to save the attack later in the afternoon.
In reference to Gallipoli, Aussies also love to think they were the main event there, when in fact the British and French armies on the peninsula suffered far worse casualties. Considering the impact of Gallipoli on the Australian psyche, it's taken some 90 years for historians over here to start telling the story right...
During the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, specifically during the battles for Sari Bair in August, the 3rd Light Horse Brigade's assault at "The Nek" wasn't in support of a British attack at Suvla Bay... it was actually in support of a New Zealand attack at Chunuk Bair (further up the ridge line to the east), and contrary to the history that the film has ingrained in a lot of Aussies, the futile attacks weren't callously ordered by inept British commanders, but actually by inept Australian ones.... J.M. Antill and F.G Hughes the guilty parties.
It became somewhat symbolic in Australian popular culture of a percieved British callousness towards Australian lifeblood in that conflict - the facts were however that that particular balls-up was entirely "homemade" and if anything the Brits (or more accurately, Welsh) suffered quite badly trying to save the attack later in the afternoon.
In reference to Gallipoli, Aussies also love to think they were the main event there, when in fact the British and French armies on the peninsula suffered far worse casualties. Considering the impact of Gallipoli on the Australian psyche, it's taken some 90 years for historians over here to start telling the story right...
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
And when they do tell it right, they're shouted down by right-wing historians for whom Aborigines weren't ever here when white folk arrived.
Camulodunum
Mayan Blowdart Marksman
what about the trojan war? was that true?
Probably, to an extent. There were probably some dudes from Greece who got together and spent a long time raiding along the Anatolian coast and capturing Wilusa. After that, it's pretty hard to say.
Camulodunum
Mayan Blowdart Marksman
yeah because of insufficient records and many myth creaters were making up stuff about trojan horse, so for me it could go either way
Henky
Warlord
Long ago, i read something on the Trojan War, it was found out that Troja could be razed nine times in history. It seems to me that thing about that horse is just a myth, that came from the victorious side...
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
There was a city on the site of Troy that was razed around the time that Homer's poem is set, so there's likely some truth to the story. But the reasoning behind it, the horse, and the interventions of the gods, those are likely purely fictional. Particularly the interventions of the gods.
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
There's also the idea that no-one had found Australia before Europeans landed, despite the thriving trade and intermarriage between several Northern Australian Aboriginal communities and Indonesian ones.
Be very careful when you say thriving trade. Makassans did reach Australia, but to describe it as flourishing trade is inaccurate, the Makassans turned up, went looking for trepang, traded what amounted to nominal amounts of goods essentially baubles and then left.
I would attribute that kind of behaviour more to general ignorance and the long period it takes for popular history to catch up with academic history. I will also invoke the 'Brisbane Line' Southern Australia doesn't give two figs for the North.
Proof of point, northern Australia was attacked by Japanese carrier based aircraft, how many people know that? I can't count the number of times on ANZAC day that people have invoked the myth that Australia was never attacked during the war. Darwin alone was attacked 97 times...
Elta
我不会把这种
I am 998 months old and a very well traveled man thank you.
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
Oh, I meant thriving as in existent and repetitive. Not as in a hub in a massive trading empire. Considering it's a well-known 'fact' that Aborigines never laid eyes on Asians until we started importing Chinese for cheap labour, that's thriving enough.
And why would we? It's too damn hot, and there are foreigners and natives. Sophisticated, educated white folk, like those in Sydney and Canberra, are perfectly comfortable with other cultures, so long as they are mowing our lawns and collecting our garbage. Your own fault for living up there.
Been a long time since I've heard that Australia was never attacked. I've often heard that there were no battles on Australian soil - bull - and that Darwin was the only city to be bombed by the Japanese - more bull, they made it as far south as Townsville, and I believe even Broome - and that it was only the one -
- time.Yeah I'm pretty sure there's the remains of the Japanese plane shot down over Broome at their airport.
To be fair, the first Darwin raid was by far the biggest and most damaging of any attack on Australian cities.
Also I have family in Broome and I've been there enough to know I hate tropical Australia. It's too hot and my family there are rednecks.
To be fair, the first Darwin raid was by far the biggest and most damaging of any attack on Australian cities.
Also I have family in Broome and I've been there enough to know I hate tropical Australia. It's too hot and my family there are rednecks.
We get blamed for the screw-ups of Southern Australia. What's the saying... the road to hell is paved... I won't count the number of times well meaning white folk academics and politicians have screwed up and hamstrung the Northern Territory and its natives.
We can start with the Federal Governments slap-shod transition towards us becoming self governing. They cut our funding, forced us to close our services and we are still paying for that inattention... yet they still have the balls to blame us for it.
Bad Northern Territories fault! Bad! Your blecks should be treated better, you evil evil rednecks! Of course we've seen aborigines, in the Zoo! It doesn't matter that we've never talked to the animals as it were, our hearts are in the right place!
Battle of Britain? I know Townsville and Broome were attacked as well
North Queenslanders are rednecks. You can't say that about Darwin or Broome... we were multicultural a hundred years or so before it was cool. All the Chinese we had, that kinda outnumbered the white folks here and there by a factor of 5 at times. Not to mention we had Greeks before it was cool as well.
It has always been cool to have Greeks.
What does Broome's multiculturalism have to do with the fact that my family are rednecks!? I mean, some of them are literally red.
Myenaeans or the ... Sea People?
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