Colonial past haunts ‘project’:
Aboriginal Australians demanded a halt on a A$2.1 billion ($1.6 billion) tram construction project in Sydney after excavators found 20,000 objects potentially linked to one of the country’s first conflicts between its original inhabitants and Europeans.
Within months of starting work on the three-year project, a government archaeological consultant said on Thurs- day that excavators found the trove of stone relics in a small patch of land where a new tram station is planned.
“What we want to see is a stop work order to fully understand this,” the consultant, Scott Franks, who is aboriginal, told reporters.
“If it’s going to be torn up, the whole site has got to be treated as a thorough and proper archaeological investigation, and time and expertise is needed.”
The find underscores one of Australia’s great unresolved conflicts: a desire for progress in a society first formed as a United Kingdom penal colony, coupled with a history of sometimes violent oppression of the country’s original occupants.
Franks said the site may be linked to one of the most famous clashes between UK settlers and Aborigines in 1790, when a garrison of first fleet soldiers was sent to kill or capture six aborigines in retaliation for spearing a colonial ranger. The troops returned emptyhanded.
The New South Wales state government meanwhile wants to spend A$16.5 billion on road and rail upgrades throughout the city of 5 million people as it braces for another million inhabitants in the next decade. (RTRS)