Eliza Berry: "And brilliant record show.
Whose names but said, our children stand.
Each and every Australian should be so proud of our wonderful, brave and heroic explorers of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. Without these men we would never have explored the extended lands of our vast country. Without these men, we would never have discovered some our most precious resources, nor have been shown how to do so with such courage and determination. Of course, all these endurances and explorations would have been much more heroic, if in fact, these men were actually the first men to do it. The fact cannot be denied that in many historical books and journals these men were the first to cross, what was then, unexplored land. But what many of these historical writings conveniently forget to include is that these men were only the first white European men to discover and explore our land. The Aboriginals had been inhabitants of our land long before any white man had set foot on Australian soil, and they knew their land well. Without the help and assistance of many Aboriginal groups and guides, many more white European expeditions would have endured the same fate as that of Burke and Wills, whose lives could have been saved by adapting to the land and utilizing methods practiced by the Aboriginals. Explorers who were wise and open-minded enough to adapt to the ways of the Aboriginals learned valuable lessons. Similarities can therefore be drawn to the intelligence corps within modern day armed forces, where by the explorers gathered information from the Aboriginals who were experienced with the land. The often unspoken and until recently, unwritten truth is that many men would not have been so successful in their explorations, without the aid of Aboriginal knowledge and their invaluable guidance and help. The fact that so many of the Aboriginals were helpful to the white explorers, places a dark shadow on the somewhat ruthless imperialistic nature of their "discoveries".
