Australia like South Africa

[Marius]

Is it possible to have Australia be like OTL SA, where the Aborigines are in the majority, and OZ has just emerged from a period of racial domination from white Australians over black Australians. How do you have Aborigines in the majority (no genocide, disease?), and how do you have a smaller white pop. in Aus (maybe USA doesn't become independent - most British settlers go there, or someone else, a British Brazil?). What would such a country look like today? I see three possibilities - 1. A well-functioning multi-racial state - eg. USA, France, UK
2. A relatively well-run multi-racial state, but with serious issues to address eg. SA, Brazil, Namibia
3. A racially polarised hellhole, eg. Zim

[Melvin Loh]

Gday Marius, well as other Aussie posters like DMA have suggested, what about factors like the need for Australia to have been settled by other Europeans and not just the Brits ? Wouldn't that be a significant factor in addition to the suggestions you've provided ? Of course, there'd also be the impact of greater Asian and other immigration into this equation.

[TheLoneAmigo]

For one, you're going to need to start way back. Australia's Aboriginal population wasn't really big enough to provide a slave base, even before the diseases and slaughter. So perhaps start with Matthew White's Muslim Australia (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/misc/auslam1.htm) scenario.

[Cognitive Dissident]

You could play around with the idea of a Portuguese discovery of Australia in the 15/16th centuries.

This would give the aboriginals plenty of time to rebound from disease. It would also allow any Portuguese settlements, to develop their own culture in a manner similiar to the Afrikaans in South Africa.

Australia could then become part of the British Empire, (especially if Gold is discovered) only to be lost after the second world war, giving rise to a nationlistic racist government.

If you wanted to raise the population from outside you could have the portuguese discover gold in the eighteenth century and import slaves from outside the continent. (or they might simply enslave tens of thousands of aboriginals, creating the basis for a later racist caste state.)