Day 28 Sydney and the Australia Museum.

After a brief chat with Shelly on Skype we walked to the museum.  What an amalgam of history, fossils, minerals, skeletons, and native animals.  We saw lots of things that can kill you but most locals say the threat is very hyped!  A series of clever displays using skeletons in contemporary settings to teach relative sizes - I liked the "bone ranger" with a skeleton of a woman on a horse skeleton - quite a size miss match - but we know lots of women who control horses that big.
 
The most interesting area was the Indigenous Australians exhibition, focused on all aspects of their history; it was overwhelming.  They came from SE Asia about 22,000 years ago before the sea levels rose and isolated them for many thousands of years.  The aboriginal population developed as small clans or tribes with very different languages; only the neighboring 3 or 4 clans could understand each other, unlike in NZ where the Maori language is shared with native all the South Seas Islanders.
 
The white settlers treated them terribly!  They took the land, killed them with diseases, massacred them when necessary - sound like a story we have heard before?

The most draconian policy was the forced removal of children to settlements where they were to be educated in white ways; the girls were to do housework and marry whites, while the boys were poorly educated, did manual labor, and their wages were kept "for them" by the government.  Many children were told their parents were dead and lost all connection their heritage.  This went on from the early 1800's until 1969 when it was officially repealed by the government.  There have been many official actions trying to redress past policy but we have seen little evidence of successful integration in our brief stay.   But we need a better understanding of the current reality to reach valid conclusions.

Back to the hotel and we both wrote about the day for a while, then a nap, Chris had another massage near the hotel and then off to dinner so we can return early to pack for the trip tomorrow.