Remember Australia Day 1988?
I do. I was among the two million spectators around Sydney Harbour. It was great day. Someone else who was there was academic David Andrew Roberts.
In a new book, Turning Points in Australian History (UNSW Press), Roberts writes on “The Arrival of the First Fleet and the [note the scare quotes] ‘Foundation of Australia’”.
Roberts remembers that he was present on the shores of Sydney Harbour “among the 100,000 [sic] heat-stroked crowd”:
My outstanding memories, next to sunburn and claustrophobia, are of Aboriginal protestors greeting the ships with shrill slogans and threatening gestures.
Perhaps he forgot to slip, slap, slop.
I thought you might like to know.