we are all visitors ... we observe, learn, grow, love (24 January 2016)

In the age of discovery,  the Dutch, French and English all circled (but did not quite circumnavigate) the great southern land.  The Dutch passed on it, but the French were sniffing around and were potential rivals for the English.

Bob Brown says the French were very interested in Tasmania, before it was colonised by the English.  The French explorer Labillardiere treated the people as equals when he "clasped the hand of the oldest Aboriginal man on the beach at Southport Lagoon in Tasmania in 1793.  The two elders from disparate cultures made a statement about the celebration of difference that puts to shame the guns, murder and mass suffering, which followed a decade later when the British settled Tasmania."

What if the French had settled Australia first? (SMH)

It's tempting to think that the French may have been more sympathetic colonisers, but it's unlikely they would have kept the land (think of the loss of Quebec and Louisiana to the English).

And the French aren't altogether sympathetic colonisers after all (Vietnam, Algeria).

An Aboriginal proverb reminds us, 

We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home.

The Tour of Australia is a gesture to the very popular Tour de France

     

Francois Peron’s French lessons in the colonisation of Australia (The Australian)

Artworks from French voyage to Australia in 1800s to go on show in Australian museums (ABC)

Upon arrival off the coast of Tasmania in 1772, when confronted by suspicious Aborigines on shore, Marion du Fresne sent two of his well-built but very fair-skinned sailors on shore unarmed and naked, to indicate their peaceful intentions.