Turning the Map Upside Down

Abstract

If we turn the map upside down and start Australian history where its documentation properly begins – in the north – the kaleidoscope of Australian history falls into a completely different pattern. Prior contact with Muslim Asians on the north coasts and the cultural bridge of the Torres Strait into coastal New Guinea, make nonsense of the idea of an isolated continent. Indeed, until World War II, whites were heavily outnumbered in the north by close‐knit Asian and indigenous communities. Instead of a White Australian past in the north we see a history of ‘mixed relations’.