A few important Muslim leaders regretted that Australian society, as they experienced it, defied their beliefs and preachings. In their eyes it was d… - Geoffrey Blainey

Menzies was the first - and maybe the only - national leader of whom it could be safely said that he was capable of rising to the top of almost any ladder he dared to climb.

Some talk of the “history wars” raging in Australia. The word “war” is mistaken. Controversy, not war, will continue for a long time to come. It is in the nature of history and of most intellectual activities, and the more so in a nation where the main strands of history – ­Aboriginal and European – are utterly different.

We have long believed that during the time of the Aborigines' domination their landscape did not change. At times it changed dramatically. The basalt plains of that part of Victoria, which was later named Australia Felix, were violently affected by volcanoes. For most of the people living close to the ocean - and for some who had never seen it - a more shattering change was the rising of the sea and the drowning of their hunting grounds. Nothing in the short history of British Australia can match those physical changes.