The Story of Australia's People Volume 2 Quotes

“For ages the Aborigines had relied heavily on isolation. It was their asset and their liability, and gave them long-term control of the continent. But if their isolation were to end, as it ultimately had to end with a shrinking world, their whole way of life could be fractured. Even the arrival of a few thousand permanent settlers, whether from Europe or Asia, would be like the first tremors of an earthquake.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia's People Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia

“One Australian tradition is to cut down the elite and the successful. It had its roots in the era of convicts who naturally opposed those in authority. This levelling or egalitarian tradition continued to flourish on the goldfields in the 1850s when the unusual mining laws gave everyone an opportunity to find gold, and the tradition was accentuated around 1900 by the rising trade unions. The attitude was one of the spurs to Australian democracy.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia's People Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia

“Innovation is usually not a gigantic step but a series of small jumps involving various enterprising people whose names are soon forgotten.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia's People Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia

“If, on the eve of the war, a fortune teller had pointed to all the Australian men between the ages of 20 and 30, and had predicted that a number equal to 60 per cent of that age group would be killed or permanently disabled in the coming war, she would have been ridiculed but she would have been correct.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia's People Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia

“The birth of a nation called for many fathers, none of whom could be pre-eminent, and when Parkes died the federation was only a balloon floating beckoningly in the air.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Story of Australia's People Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia