Backbencher

I enjoyed the picture show on Australia, particularly the Sydney opera house and the Sydney bridge. Though the opera house was described as looking like a "bunch of clams crammed in a manual typewriter" I felt it resembled a fleet of ship sails clustered in a harbor.

Overall, i felt that the colonization of Australia was poorly planned. The initial fleet that arrived at Sydney had a dearth of skilled labor and tools. Foresight could have prevented this problem, as white-collar criminals, prostitutes, pimps and other pet criminals don't usually make the best farmers, foragers, or construction workers. The later arrival of the New South Wales Corps led to the obvious conclusion of a caste-like system of aristocracy, criminals, and near-slaves.

The planned colonization of New Zealand was a good idea, but clearly doomed from the start, especially when one considers the tendency towards self-satisfaction inherent in human nature. While demand for workers should have guaranteed fair wages for the working class, isolation gave power to the landholders. Eventually, the desire for more land, the suppression of the workers, and the discovery of gold led to unplanned expansion and the arrival of "undesirables".

I would like to address the comment about the phrase "invasion of New Zealand" being overly harsh, or an exaggeration. I have to disagree. New Zealand was the property, and home, of the Maori until Europeans arrived and claimed the land for themselves. Over time, the biological introduction of different plants and animals changed the New Zealand landscape so that it wasn't even the land that was once theirs. Their world was turned upside down by the "invasion" of Europeans. I find A.H. Clark's use of the word to be too subtle, rather than too harsh.