Midnight Oil — Frontier... What Frontier?

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 firеworks, and an immense bonfire With which thеy 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