Letter

In response to The unpromised land down under

A passage to the Kimberley

Further to ‘The unpromised land down under.’

Another case of the settler colonists thinking that the land was theirs to give away, with nary a thought for the traditional owners. As the author notes: “the land’s original owners were not consulted.”

Terra nullius on two levels? The Kimberley or Palestine.

My understanding is that during the 1930s European Jews wishing to flee Germany could do so if they were able to gain sponsors in Australia.

Wilfred Burchett, in Passport: An Autobiography [1969], describes the efforts he went to, and the personal dangers he faced traveling in and out of Hitler’s Germany, in securing passage for German Jews to Australia; he’d arranged sponsorship via the community in Poowong (Vic).

— Graeme Drysdale from Ballarat