Turning Back The Boats (or The Tyranny Of Distance Is That We Are Never Far Enough Away From Stupid Ideas).

Invasions break like waves on history's beach

Inspired by greed or misplaced good intentions

Bringing with them God, alcohol and syphilis

New forms of war, old social conventions

Australia was Terra Incognita until Europe

Flung its unwanted shit against these shores

Only after white men landed in tricorn hats

Did it become Terra Nullius under foreign laws

If only the Enlightenment experiment

Had extended to criminalising hypocrisy

Then politicians would have been transported

To the colonies - an act of true democracy

And if only the indigenous peoples of this land

Spoke Latin and possessed a vast navy

Then the First Fleet would have been turned around

And Indonesia would be eating roast beef with gravy

© shaun patrick green 2013