Frontier... What Frontier? - Midnight Oil

The catch was in the last phrase

Settlers would, themselves, define if Aborigines occupied land

What is to be the interpretation of the word occupied, is the question

It is not occupied according to any law regulating possession

Which is recognised by civilised people

I had collected all my worn-out children’s clothes

And dressed them like children in them

We gave them some fireworks, and an immense bonfire

With which they were highly delighted

And finished by the blacks amusing us with their corroborees

Which are the oddest exhibition you can conceive

The interpreter told us

They were describing the first ship that arrived in Holdfast Bay

And the landing of good white men

And the good biscuits they got in Adelaide

Sir, I have this evening perused an account

Of the progress of an Aboriginal mission

And I certainly conceive it to be one of the most glaring

And oppressive outrages on the public funds

The hatred, with which the white man regards the black

That feeling results from fear

From the strong physical contrast which intercept the sympathy

Which subsists between men of the same race

From the proud sense of superiority

From the consciousness of having done them great wrongs

And from the desire to escape this pain of self reproach

By laying the blame on the injured party