'Modern Australia began in 1802 with the defeat and death of the Eora warrior Pemulwuy.
'Europeans had placed the original Australian population at 300,000 yet more recent analysis indicates that the population was much greater and may have been in the order of a million people. Whatever the original population, its collapse was spectacular.
'The causes of the collapse seem to have been a mix of diseases, massacres, and a variety of other depredations, such as the poisoning of foods. To understand some of the reasons for this bulk loss of people, and, indeed, the destruction of the traditional social order, it is necessary to understand principles that operated within traditional Australian society.
'By the 1930s a new part of Aboriginal society had begun to take action about their plight. These were the diaspora, the mixed-race people and many of these were assisted by sympathetic European groups.'
(Source : 1986 Frank Archibald Memorial Lecture)
