Victor,
Should you need to read further into our history,
I offer the following link.
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/ar...1998/bird.html
This is not hundreds of years ago, but as late as the thirties
and even into the 1950's, a mere heartbeat away.

Many of the short entries from confidential submissions contain
phrases of a poignant wistfulness that is so very sad: 'I've often thought,
as old as I am, that it would have been lovely to have known a father and
a mother, to know parents even for a little while, just to have had the
opportunity of having a mother tuck you into bed and give you a good-night kiss
-- but it was never to be.' The writer of that sentence in Confidential submission
number 65, was fostered at two months of age, in 1936 in Tasmania.
And a woman who was sent to the Cootamundra Girls' Home in the 1950s
gives us in Confidential submission number 332 a vivid picture from her memory:
'I remember all we children being herded up, like a mob of cattle, and feeling
the humiliation of being graded by the colour of our skins for
the government records'.



--

(Remove gum to reply)


"Rodney" wrote in message ...
| Hi Victor,
| My problem is that we have had, from what I can see
| a selective history ethic in our schools, which is however,
| changing for the better.
|
| I personally do feel some responsibility, not for what has
| happened in the past, but for some in my generation that
| do not have the generosity of spirit to offer a simple
| apology, that goes toward reconciliation of our collective
| whole.
|
| One can argue the folly or otherwise, of such feeling or desire,
| but the fact remains, it is what I feel in my heart, not my head.
| What cost an apology? I feel empathy for these poor people
| that have been so abused in our past, I think it brotherly to show
| we share and understand their pain.
|
| Rgds
|
|
|
|