The Seven Years War was a massive global conflict fought across five continents that pitted Great Britain and Prussia against France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Spain. Driven by imperial rivalries and European territorial disputes it lead to those countries seeking to establish colonies in the Asia-Pacific Region.

My thesis is that Britain, which wanted to secure a base in the Southwest Pacific to keep the French and Russians out, decided to establish a colony on the east coast of Australia, east of the 135th meridian, which had been claimed by Cook for Britain in 1770. An economic factor was that Empress Catherine II of Russia's policies threatened to restrict the sale of hemp. At the time, practically all the hemp and flax required by the Royal Navy for cordage and sailcloth was imported from Russia. Norfolk Island was discovered by Cook in 1774 during his second voyage. He reported that  New Zealand flax (seen as a potential source of materials for rigging ships in the age of sail) grew there, as well as the stautesque Norfolk Pine, from which excellent masts and yard arms could be made for the repair of the ships of the British Navy. That is why, barely six weeks after the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove, Governor Arthur Phillip ordered Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to lead a party of 15 convicts and seven free men to take control of Norfolk Island, and to prepare for its commercial development. Norfold Island is probablythe only place where the term terra nullus in fact applied.  Archaeological investigation suggests that in the 13th or 14th century the island was settled by East Polynesian seafarers, but human occupation appears to have ceased at least a few hundred years before Europeans arrived.

I think that the establishment of a colony on the east coast of Australia was for a clearly politoco-economic reason, and not in order to ease the discomfort of criminals. The idea that free people would travel halfway around the World into the unknown to start a colony from scratch with no guarantee of success would not provide the workforce needed by the government. So, the government gathered up a group of people who were compellable to do as directed.

Those people were found in the hulks. Horror stories have been spread about life in the hulks, but they, too, may be a mixture of reality and myth. Conditions were probably no better nor worse than in prisons on the land. Due to growing poverty of free people drawn to the cities, for men who grew destitute and faced the workhouse, life as a convict was measured out against the negatives of offending. After all, prisoners were provided with three meals a day. They left the confines of the hulks regularly to work on govrnment projects. They mastered trades and learnt to read and write. These convicts, already sentenced to transportation, provided a more competent type than could have been drawn from land prisons. Nevertheless, government officials made every attempt to make life on board as punitive as possible. Daily routines were more naval than penal.

For some information about life in the hulks, here;s a link: https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/carchipelago/2017/10/10/a-day-in-the-life-convicts-on-board-prison-hulks/

The book can be purchased through online booksellers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Fishpond, Booktopia and Angus and Robertson. Prices vary a lot, and some are in US$ so check carefully.

The book is published by Echo Books.

Although apparently some took it seriously, a few sold their houses and moved, it was mostly treated a little more lightheartedly.   Some workers turned up to their jobs in flippers and floaties. I can remember "I survived the Adelaide tidal wave" T-shirts.   The Premier, the colourful Don Dunstan, stood on a balcony at Glenelg saying if the tidal wave came, he would turn it back.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/the-incredible-aussie-inventions-that-changed-the-world/image-gallery/f5e1b01c5c03a551c28ecea6c7a2ad9a

It's the film seen after 89 years, not the animal.

(Oh, and a chemistry teacher)

Happily there is one plane with a strong Aussie link that has recently undergone restoration to airworthy condition in England. This plane is Sidney Cotton's Lockheed 12-A Electra. Who, what do you ask? Sidney Cotton was an Australian-born character of the first half of the 20th Century. I would not be too far wrong in suggesting that that rake, Errol Flynn, modeled himself after Sidney Cotton. 

What do you wear in an open-cockpit military aircraft in WWI to keep out the the cold? Why, of course. You wear a Sidcot suit.  His experience with high level and low-temperature flying as a member of the Royal Navy Air Service, led Cotton in 1917 to develop the revolutionary new 'Sidcot' suit, a flying suit which solved the problem pilots had in keeping warm in the cockpit.  This flying suit was widely used by the Royal Air Force until the 1950s.

In the 1930s, At a time when most photographs were in black and white, Cotton purchased the rights to sell outside of France a French colour film called Dufaycolor, which led him to engage in frequent travels throughout Europe, which he did flying himself about. In September 1938 during the Sudetenland crisis, Cotton was approached by agents of the Deuxième Bureau (the French intelligence department) to undertake spy flights over Germany. Cotton's role in promoting Dufaycolor  gave him a plausible excuse to fly to Germany. Starting on 25 March 1939, using the cover of a newly founded dummy corporation, the Aeronautical Research and Sales Corporation of London, Cotton started to make spy flights over Germany, Italy and the Italian colony of Libya in the pay of the Deuxième Bureau. In April 1939, Cotton was recruited by Fred Winterbotham of MI6 to take clandestine aerial photographs of the German military buildup. Cotton turned over his Lockheed Electra airplane to the Deuxième Bureau while MI6 provided Cotton with a new Lockheed 12-A Electra aircraft.

Cotton's was the last civilian aircraft to leave Berlin before the outbreak of hostilities. After Cotton took off from the airport in Berlin, he noticed Luftwaffe planes on their way to bomb Poland. Upon landing in Britain, he told British customs that he just left Berlin earlier that morning and was told: "Left it a bit late, haven't you?" One biography is titled Sidney Cotton: The Last Plane Out of Berlin

It is this Lockheed 12-A Electra which has been returned to England and restored. The restoration is the subject of his video.

The story of Cotton's escapades in spying on Germany was the subject of an Australian, made-for-television program. This is the trailer for the programme.

The workmanship of the gold and silver items on display is amazing, especially when you consider the type of tools they had back in the inca times.

Knowing what some of the items were used for and getting to see them up so close is a bit unnerving. 

The whole display is well done and gives a lot of information in a format that is not hard to digest.

Here is a video telling the Australian side of the Siege. The Italians also made a movie about it.

Well, selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door was the job he got after he was demobbed from the Army in the late 1940's, but, during the War, Electrolux was a small arms manufacturer. Electrolux built a factory in Orange, NSW in 1942 and operated as a small arms manufacturer until 1945. You've heard of the Owen sub-machine gun which was designed by an amateur in Lithgow NSW and subsequently manufactured by the Lithgow Small Arms Factory, bur have you heard of the Electrolux Charlton?

At the end of the War, there was concern the hundreds of people employed at the small arms factory would be unemployed. The mayor led a parade of people through Orange as a sort of protest saying 'We want jobs', and luckily Email Limited which had purchased  did a deal with the prime minister, Ben Chifley, to have a decentralised industry because the Orange factory was the ideal place.  The whitegoods factory was first known as Emmco, and then around 1960s it was named Email. At its peak workforce in the 1970s, it employed more than 2,000 people. As with all Australian manufacturing, the Email plant could not compete with import and closed in 2017.

Did you know that the story is based on real events that occured in East Africa during WWI?  The campaign involved two British Navy launches commanded by a naval officer whose CV was spectacularly mediocre, but who managed to successfully complete the aim of his mission.

I bet most will recall images like these:

But was it really like that? 

 At its worst in 1932, unemployment in Australia reached 32 per cent,but that also means that 68% of the population was employed. In the 1930s, it was rare for women to be employed to the same extent as they are today. "Mother and homemaker" described the occupation of most women. Sure things were really tough for the unemployed, and tough for most of the employed, was there a cloud of despair hanging over the country with lives stagnated?

I say that present generations have been dudded with respect to a realistic portrayal of life in Australia in the 1930s. It was a time of great political and literary activity. Politically there was a great deal going on with people promoting a wide variety of agenda from ultra-conservative to radical anarchy. Not only were there the old, established newspapers which tended to deliver the agenda of the rich and powerful, but there were many small publications which carried ideas ranging from fascism to communism and all stations in between. People attended public meeting to hear or heckle speakers. People associated to form action groups aimed at promoting particular agenda. And governments through their enforcement arm, the police, tried to maintain the political and power status quo. 

Since great numbers of people had gone through the trauma of WWI, and the politics around it, such as the Conscription Issue, there was a strong nationalist sentiment calling for severing ties with Britain, embodied in the Australia First movement. Obviously, the rich and powerful pushed against that idea, as they have done ever since. It is interesting that racism in the forms of support for the White Australia policy and anti-Jewish feelings were still strongly held by most. It is interesting that in the late 1930s, with the approach of the 150th centenary of the establishment of the British colony, there was a strong movement to remove the paternalism and restrictions being applied to Aborigines. We know in our own times of the objections to Australia Day, but in 1938 Aboriginal people, and their European supporters of the Aboriginal Progressive Association marked the 26th January with a day of mourning.

On the literary side people like Miles Franklin encouraged and supported writers and poets. There was a strong literary set in Sydney with people like poet Kenneth Slessor, author Xavier Herbert, a collection of other poets and authors as well as musicians and actors. Local film production battled against the might of Hollywood and Ealing Studios. Smith's Weekly brought satire and social comment to the working class. The Bulletin continued to support the creation of a distinctive Australian literature into the 20th century, most notably under the editorship of Samuel Prior (1915–1933), who created the first novel competition. 

All these things are worth celebrating. They should be held up to our young as shining examples of what a spirit of nationalism can produce. It is said that history is written by the victors. It seems that this dark and dismal image of the 1930s in Australia is the history product of the victors - the rich and powerful - and thrust on the rest as a means of subjugation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4BovG9Yyuc

The Gweagal (also spelt Gwiyagal) are a clan of the Dharawal people who occupied the south shore between Botany Bay/Georges River and the saltwater bays and estuaries of Port Hacking. They also used the fresh water resources of the upper Hacking River, Heathcote Creek and the Woronora River. Evidence from Curracurrang, an area in the Royal National Park, shows occupation dates from about 8,200 years before present, but that site may have be in the country of another Dharawal clan.

The dates obtained for earliest occupation fall into the geological period known as the Holocene (11.7 thousand years ago to today), otherwise commonly known as the post-glacial period. From that time, the sea levels  worldwide were rising. From Aboriginal stories, it is reasonable to conclude that at the beginning of the Holocene,  the coastal plain extended further to the east over the continental shelf. Also from certain Aboriginal stories relating to astronomy, it is concluded that humans were occupying the continent as far south as Tasmania before 10,000 years ago. As the sea level rose and inundated the coastal plain, the occupants moved west, stopping when sea levels somewhat stabilised to their present position. Other Aboriginal stories tell of people coming by canoe from the east, which would support that movement. 

A similar situation is known to have occurred with the inundation of Doggerland. At the beginning of the Holocene, the area between mainland Europe and the eastern coast of Great Britain formed the northwest corner of an icy continent. Warming climate exposed a vast continental shelf for humans to inhabit. Further warming and rising seas gradually flooded low-lying lands. Some 8,200 years ago, a catastrophic release of water from a North American glacial lake and a tsunami from a submarine landslide off Norway inundated whatever remained of Doggerland.

So, we are back to the old argument - Invasion Day: 26th January or 29th April?