Dancing with Strangers Text Classics

Author Inga Clendinnen has written an interpretive history of the meeting of Australians, in what is now the Sydney Harbour area, with the British First Fleet of 1788. The title meaning is that the Australians and the British began their relationship by dancing together via song and dance. That relationship fell apart not long after, and basically fell off the proverbial cliff when Governor Arthur Phillip returned to Britain in late 1872 1792.

There is an interesting comment that the author makes in relation to what we in more modern times would call domestic violence. Based on Inga Clendinnen deep research on all available publications and documents of that time, the treatment of women by the Australians was not something that makes comfortable reading and is made comment on by various surviving writings from those times. Throughout the reading of Dancing with Strangers, the author goes to great lengths to discuss cultural differences and an understanding of them. This is an area that was of extreme difference between the strangers.
“It seems that what can be judged reprehensible violence is a cultural matter. We are disconnected that (British observers) could watch those hangings and floggings unmoved.” The author writes about punishment that the convicts received as a matter of course. That the Australians were horrified by these forms of punishment and that was noted by various accounts. On the other hand we can be sure “...that after such sanctioned displays whether of floggings or wife bashing, both sides were left goggling at each other across a cultural chasm. Every society is adept at looking past its own forms of violence, and reserving its outrage for the violence of others.”

Inga Clendinnen makes various comment on cultural chasm. There were things that the British did not see in their various writings with the fact that these settlers may have never grasped the respect shown to age, ritual experience, their freedom and their material equality to name just some. Their own fledgling society was “...sustained by the whip...” and the “...sanctify of property...” and that some of the British be that convict or free were hanged to protect that sanctity of property rights. The Australians hardly gave a thought to property rights and such was Phillip's attempts to dance with these stranger in what for the times seems a very enlightened attitude, there was great outrage among both the convict and the free that they were being punished whereas the Australians were treated lightly.

But with the coming of the British, there was irreversible change. Over a short period of time, three years in the lifetime of Baneelon (or Bennelong as he is known today) the world changed for the worse for the Australians. Baneelon was one of the first to dance with these strangers. He was eventually taken to Britain by Phillip at the end of his governorship. Baneelon came back to a Sydney that had grown and no longer cared for him, and his own people no longer held him in high regard. His is a sad story of an alcoholic demise and death.

Inga Clendinnen covers and gives opinions on topics such racism, language and cultural barriers and plenty more. The epilogue covers her thoughts about the historical issues that have reared their, at times, ugly head and talks in hope of “...the possibility of a decent co-existence between unlike groups...” with “...scrutiny of our assumptions and values as they come under challenge...” Inga passed away in 2016. As I write, the Australian peoples of all colours and creeds are facing a referendum on a constitutional change. I wonder what she would have thought of this attempt to no longer talk as strangers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Australian_Indigenous_Voice_referendum

A fantastic read and highly recommended.