Why it's time to redefine Australia Day
"Macquarie – widely considered one of the more progressive early governors, not least in relation to making this land an economic asset for the empire and for his treatment of the colony's Aboriginal people – called the colony's celebration of itself “foundation day”.
By that first celebration of foundation day, Macquarie had already lost his patience with the local Indigenous people because of the threat they posed to the empire's new pastoral frontier by stealing stock and attacking the settlers who had taken their traditional lands.
In 1816 he’d ordered his troops to attack the Aboriginal people at Cow Pastures, south of Sydney, where they'd been playing havoc with the stock runners. Those who did not surrender as “prisoners of war”, Macquarie ordered, should be killed and the males hung up on trees as an example to others. It was a massacre."
As per Article
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