Islamic Australia 1526

I personally have driven through a gen-u-ine Australian historical anomaly dozens of times, so think YellowDingo's claims may not be overly bizzare. Near my parent's place there is a swamp where Aboriginies settled down and lived in stone and thatch huts to 'work' an improved wetland and smoke meat of later consumption. The settlers drained the swamp and wrecked the huts, so that 100 years later no serious trace remains.

Matthew Flinders encountered a Maccasan 'fleet' in 1803, so it doesn't strike me as too bizzare that the crews of such a fleet could have constructed a Mosque at some time bewtween 1400 and 1803 for seasonal use.
 

Fatal Wit

Banned
I personally have driven through a gen-u-ine Australian historical anomaly dozens of times, so think YellowDingo's claims may not be overly bizzare. Near my parent's place there is a swamp where Aboriginies settled down and lived in stone and thatch huts to 'work' an improved wetland and smoke meat of later consumption. The settlers drained the swamp and wrecked the huts, so that 100 years later no serious trace remains.

Matthew Flinders encountered a Maccasan 'fleet' in 1803, so it doesn't strike me as too bizzare that the crews of such a fleet could have constructed a Mosque at some time bewtween 1400 and 1803 for seasonal use.
Out of curiosity, are their any other "anomalies"? Just curious.
 
Out of curiosity, are their any other "anomalies"? Just curious.

Chinese shipwrecks, allegedly. And I'm sure that's only the start. The idea of a 'virgin' Australia asleep through the millennia waiting for True Love's First Kiss to be administered courtesy of the Royal Navy is an extremely dodgy narrative.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Chinese shipwrecks, allegedly. And I'm sure that's only the start. The idea of a 'virgin' Australia asleep through the millennia waiting for True Love's First Kiss to be administered courtesy of the Royal Navy is an extremely dodgy narrative.

When I was living in Lebanon, an Australian "archaeologist" (by profession a developer) announced on late night Russian TV that he had discovered the ruins of a Phoenician settlement near Perth. The Lebanese ambassador in Moscow caught the show and reported the news back home. In one version of the story, the Lebanese government was prepared to demand immediate naturalization for all Lebanese residents in Australia on the grounds that "we found it first".
 
I used to work on the farm where the 'Mahogany Ship' is supposedly buried. Apparently it sailed up into the Merri River cutting and got trapped by the shifting sandbar at the mouth. The Mahogany ship is supposedly Portuguese from the early 1500s, but could also be Dutch from the 1600s. Also supposedly it was buried by shifting sands over the centuries before being reported in the mid 1800s, but apparently a discreet govt mission was sent to destroy the wreck so the ship's country of origin couldn't make a claim on Australia.

The Geelong keys are another anomoly, supposedly much older than British settlement if the area.

As for the Aboriginies when the conditions were suitable, like the Condah swamp, they settled down to a sedentry life working improved wetlands. Building stone weirs they kept the water level where they wanted it, caught eels and fish in traps and hunted the game that flocked to such good water supplies in summer. I wonder what European settlement would have been like if the first fleet had pulled up at Portland, only 50km from Condah and well within its food trading area.
 
I used to work on the farm where the 'Mahogany Ship' is supposedly buried. Apparently it sailed up into the Merri River cutting and got trapped by the shifting sandbar at the mouth. The Mahogany ship is supposedly Portuguese from the early 1500s, but could also be Dutch from the 1600s. Also supposedly it was buried by shifting sands over the centuries before being reported in the mid 1800s, but apparently a discreet govt mission was sent to destroy the wreck so the ship's country of origin couldn't make a claim on Australia.

that's intresting. really.
the Differance between this thread and what you're saying is you have evidence.
this "islamic aussyland' has no back up evidence.

As for the Aboriginies when the conditions were suitable, like the Condah swamp, they settled down to a sedentry life working improved wetlands. Building stone weirs they kept the water level where they wanted it, caught eels and fish in traps and hunted the game that flocked to such good water supplies in summer. I wonder what European settlement would have been like if the first fleet had pulled up at Portland, only 50km from Condah and well within its food trading area.

portugese or Dutch Australia?
now that sounds like a good idea for an AH timeline.
 
There certainly was contact between the trepang hunters from Malacca and aborigines in the Darwin area. There was seasonal settlement where the catch was processed and presumably some trade with the locals took place.

However, there is no evidence for a permanent settlement nor for stone buildings nor for a mosque shining white or not. An artifact that has not been found in situ is not evidence. The explanation for the lack of evidence is that the settlement was washed away and/or those nasty archaeologists are all conspiring to thwart this momentous discovery. This is just conspiracy theory stuff.

Again, there is evidence for fish traps and a semi sedentary lifestyle among some aboriginal groups in the south east of the continent. I am not familiar with buildings being discovered so some citations may be helpful here. The mahogany ship is rather like panthers in the bush or the Tassie Tiger still roaming around. Lots of claimed sightings but no actual evidence.
 
Alas no physical evidence of the Mahogany ship exists, and not for want of trying. A reward of $250,000 was offered for physical evidence to no avail. A list of some 40 sighting reports has been compiled, here's a link to an 1876 letter to a Melbourne newspaper typical of these reports. http://www.swtafe.vic.edu.au/lrc/collections/mahoganyship/1876apr01.htm

A problem I have with these sorts of things is that they bring up non-British histroy of Australia as if it's significant when it clearly isn't. My favourite is the Chinese in the goldfields, true that they were a significant presence at the time but they left no lasting mark. There is no Chinese population in Ararat today, nor any Chinese buildings, yet there is a bloody great Chinese museum in Ararat. Similarly we talk up Portuguese, Dutch and French exploration and Maccasan contact and Aboriginie fish farming villiages. But when all's said and done this strikes me as an attempt to put some spice onto white bread. While we have a handful of non British place names the USA has entire Spanish and French cities.
 
Here's a link to the ABC Catalyst show about the eel-farming villiages at Condah. http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s806276.htm A dry-stone and sod hut is a significant step up from semi-nomadism, but it's hardly Tikal.

As for the Mahopgany ship, it would be awesome to find, but other than that it would be of no real significance. It's not as if the ship was carrying settlers, or made it back to Portugal or Asia with the Welcome Stranger gold nugget.
 
Alas no physical evidence of the Mahogany ship exists, and not for want of trying. A reward of $250,000 was offered for physical evidence to no avail. A list of some 40 sighting reports has been compiled, here's a link to an 1876 letter to a Melbourne newspaper typical of these reports. http://www.swtafe.vic.edu.au/lrc/collections/mahoganyship/1876apr01.htm

A problem I have with these sorts of things is that they bring up non-British histroy of Australia as if it's significant when it clearly isn't. My favourite is the Chinese in the goldfields, true that they were a significant presence at the time but they left no lasting mark. There is no Chinese population in Ararat today, nor any Chinese buildings, yet there is a bloody great Chinese museum in Ararat. Similarly we talk up Portuguese, Dutch and French exploration and Maccasan contact and Aboriginie fish farming villiages. But when all's said and done this strikes me as an attempt to put some spice onto white bread. While we have a handful of non British place names the USA has entire Spanish and French cities.

Yes exactly.

I do not agree with your point about the Chinese presence. There maybe no Chinese in Ararat today, but decendants of the Chinese from the goldrush are all over the country and have made significant contributions to Australian society.

Even if a Portuguese settlement was unearthed somewhere, it would be of great intellectual interest but that is all. Similarly, if this settlement near Darwin was excavated it would show that there was contact but nothing more significant.
 
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