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which details the setting up of a colony at Moreton Bay (in the present day Greater Brisbane
region), was originally part of New South Wales. As a colony of Great Britain, this means
that the Moreton Bay district was also part of Great Britain. So, for this new colony to be
referred to as a vague European is to distort history, and just as importantly, not provide
students with an accurate representation of this aspect of early modern Australian history.
Furthermore, by using the term European, historical—factual—connections between Great
Britain and Australia’s national history is excluded.
This example and others like it analysed in this section, where British heritages are seen to be
omitted, a type of history denial is occurring, whereby Great Britain is becoming anonymous.
However, unlike when Indigenous Australians are treated as anonymous subjects in history
(as analysed throughout the analysis sections of this dissertation), this is not done to
subjugate Great Britain in the same way; but instead can be seen as a general move away
from recognising Australia’s British heritages. Ultimately, this denial of history is damaging
to a nation’s past. In this specific case, Europe is a vast continent with so many different
nations, nationalities and cultures residing in it, often with competing interests to one another.
Therefore, to use the term European to describe the First Fleet and subsequent colonisation of
Australia is to ignore or brush over Australia’s modern history in such a way that obfuscates
the responsibility school curriculum has in ensuring that students receive an accurate
portrayal of the facts of a nation’s past.
Demonstrating the marginalisation of British heritages that commonly occurred in curriculum
materials during this era is a major activity for Unit 1: Settlers of Australia. The colonisation
of Australia is referred to as “The first European settlement” (Department of Education,
1988a, p. 26). To use the term first, would seem to imply that there were subsequent
European countries to colonise parts of Australia, when in fact this was not and is not the
case, Australia being a rare example of a continent that has only ever had one colonial power.
It does not seem historically logical to frame the British colonization of Australia through the
term “European settlement” (Department of Education, 1988a, p. 26), and it is as though
Great Britain is mitigated through an incomplete discourse of Europe as a way to minimize
acknowledgement of the involvement of Great Britain in Australia’s early modern history.
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