Backbencher

Settlements; Convicts and Pilgrims. This lecture concentrated on the arrival and settlement of europeans into and on native aborigine and maori lands in New Zealand and Australia. The introduction of slides showing what immigrants were faced with as the disembarked on to the new lands was a very vivid way of showing the nature of climate, soils, and topographies that the immigrants had to deal with. The importation of convicts to Australia, versus the so called planned settlements of New Zealand, due to their close proximities create quite contrasting views today of these countries. But due to the many complications that a large crowd of immigrants, used to different customs, convicts who may not have had any customs, and those natives who viewed the land as theirs, created quite the stir for developement and building of towns and social customs of the colonies own. Eventually the complications of the exportations from England to Australia of convicts became so chaotic in the new colonies that the Committe set up in England to study what this policy of convict transplantation had as an effect on the colonies diecided to stop all transportation of convicts. In effect this still defines Australia today to some extent as the place where convicts started a nation to a certain degree.

New Zealand was a different type of colony, middle to upper class englishmen were imported to the islands to help start a totally planned class type colony similar to better than that of the England class system. They wanted to make a more perfect class type colony or social life. The man Wakefield who headed this planned system had his plot if you want to call it that foiled by the advent of the gold rush, not a planned rush at all, but spurred on by the greed of men looking for easy money.
This to a certain extent still defines New Zealand today as the government should take care of the people and, if problems arise the government needs to look into the problem. Quite a contrast of view from the Aussies but one can see how these reflections stemms from their roots of settlement.

These contrast and comparisons of the two nations is quite interesting seeing as how they were settled at the same time periods by the same peoples nearly, and they ended up coming out so different in their own sort of idealsim. New Zealand is this emerald paridise which is very much government run, and Australia is this rough jagged land which seems to be reflected in the people as they even in recent years have had some sort of riot and made world news due to racial tensions. So does this mean the land can have an impact on how a nation is developed, (refering to Dr. Isern' reference to the land make the people or vise versa)?
Very interesting lecture.
Dan Hillukka