Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 19.3. Aboriginal dancer on Harmony Day 2013
Even so, the day he is born, the Aborigine's luck runs out. Unemployment is high, al-
coholism is high, and Aborigines are in prisons far out of proportion to their numbers in the
general population. A good deal of the Aboriginal culture on display for the tourist trade is
contrived. However modified, the culture is most freely expressed in the Northern Territ-
ory, Australia's least populated area.
WHY AUSTRALIANS BOAST, “WE'RE THE ONES WHO GOT AWAY”
Australia was not the first of Britain's convict dumping grounds. Georgia was the first,
and when the American Revolution cut off Georgia as a place for transportation, an even
more remote convict camp was needed. Australia was the ideal candidate, across a track-
less ocean, with a harsh landscape and few natives to resist white encroachment.
Life for Britain's poor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was cruel and op-
pressive. Slums were crowded and unsanitary. Those without jobs were sent to workhouses
whose overseers made a profit by reducing inmates' food. Jails were worse. Operated as
private enterprise, jailers sold privileges for cash, and if prisoners' families could not af-
ford to buy humane treatment for prisoners, they were often chained to floors and walls.
Transportation to Australia, however hard, meant a life outdoors and an opportunity for so-
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