Quietly Invading National Identity

Penny Russell, Bicentennial Professor of History at the University of Sydney, reviews Tim Ailwood’s “The Quiet Invasion” and pedantically rejects his research and conclusions. But Ailwood has an important point to make about a future Australian Republic. Identifying the people of the Indigenous nations around Sydney as “the Australians” at the time of British settlement in 1788, Ailwood says that we all must act and understand “Australian culture” and like those original Australians accept that “the land owns us”.  “Only then”, he writes, “can our country develop a unique national identity to match its proud heritage. This is the land that we live in and must embrace”. Sounds like a reconciled Republic to WfaAR. Tim Ailwood is a Sydney actor and drama teacher. (“The Quiet Invasion: A History of Early Sydney” by Tim Ailwood, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018; Review: The Sydney Wars by Stephen Gapps, The Quiet Invasion by Tim Ailwood by Penny Russell, Fairfax online 22 June 2018)