The Doctrines of Discovery in Australia is a video series I am slowly working on.

The goal of this video series is to go through the process of colonisation in Australia, chronologically from the start to the present, and to examine what happened in context of the Doctrines of Discovery. The Doctrines of Discovery being understood to be a protocol between European Crowns. Elements of the doctrines are still being ‘imported’ into domestic law in current times, even though the doctrine is supposed to be dead 60 years ago.

I think that in Australia, there is a oversimplification on how the doctrines of discovery functioned and how they were applied in the colonisation of Australia.

It is either “Captain Cook is a hero and discovered Australia” or “the evil British invaded the First Australian nations”. But it is a lot more complicated than this. If you ask an Australian “when did Australia become an independent nation” you may get five different answers. The reason is because there are multiple layers of the colonisation process going on. Going through chronologically and examining colonisation in context of Doctrines of Discovery and of International law unpacks the layers one by one.

This video is part 2. It is about the period from the First Fleet to about 1830. During this time, the land underwent a territorial change from being Dutch to being British. A bloodless frontier line moved across the land. This is important background because it means the British did not acquire sovereignty in a uniform way across the whole land.

This has very important implications that I will draw on later in the series. The pattern of territorial acquisition has affected every high-profile major High Court case on Aboriginal issues – from Mabo, Kartinyeri, Wik. These cases are all hand-picked – the way the British acquired sovereignty over the lands in question will lead to a specific outcome. What is special about Mer Island, Hindmarsh Island and Cape York? Why did the Myall Creek massacre lead to a criminal trial but not other massacres? It’s all to do with how they were claimed and colonised in a technical, territorial sense in the first place.