Backbencher

In this lecture we looked at the early European history of NZ and OZ, which is when I think most contemporaries would say that the nations we know as NZ and OZ started. Everyone has been bemoaning the lack of information on Aborigines. Well then I want to know what the American Indians were doing before we got here, because our nation's history doesn't have much to say about them until the British colonized here either. But, whatever.

There is apparently a stark contrast between the settlement of these two colonies. OZ was a penal colony as is well known so settlement was haphazard, and they ran into difficulties as the colony evolved into a place where settlers who weren't involved with crime desired to exploit the resources of the colony (convict labor included) for their own monetary gain. The question as to whether transportation was actually a punishment anymore was raised as people started to commit crimes just for the sake of being transported to Australia. So eventually prisoner transport was stopped, but the legacy of the former prisoners remained in the country and resulted in tensions between people born in residence and immigrants.

NZ seems to have been more of a laboratory experiment in planned settlement, as if one could shape the perfect society from the ground up. Just like the British to be overly confident in the superiority of their society. Unfortunately enough for them, people care more about gold and making a fortune than about some man's ridiculous notions about colonization. The gold rush threw the plan topsy turvy when good hardworking people of the colony watched skeezy transients haplessly stumble upon the equivalent of a years' earnings of gold.

oh yeah...mythistory.