About Australia, History, traitors and their consequences

By João Lopes Marques

There is nothing more fascinating than rewriting History. Revisionism is a natural temptation for the humiliated and a big business for the manipulators. As we all know, the records and versions which prevail in the long term are the winner’s — Abba were very right stating that The Winner Takes It All.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves himself assumed recently that Estonia wants to rewrite now its own History during the Soviet yoke, and maybe more. Interesting how memories and myths from the Past influence and legitimize our identities and perceptions in the Present.

Yet, these text is devoted to Australia. I mean, to the secret discovery of Australia by the Portuguese. In that far and small European rectangle I was born people are quite excited about books printed in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. Seems that some Australian alternative intelectuals decided to challange finally the Queen of England and Captain Cook’s immortality.

In the Aussie Antipodes and without interfering in the debate, for sure we Portuguese sympathise with the idea. In some cafes in Lisbon you’ll find eventually some groups gossiping about the fact. According to Peter Tricket and its book Beyond Capricorn published in March 2007, the official discoverer of Australia should be Cristóvão de Mendonça, a Portuguese from Alentejo who built his career in Portuguese Imperial Asia.

Seems astounding, but Tricket and others assure there is now evidence he reached Botany Bay as early as 1522 — more than 250 years before Captain James Cook. It’s not completely illogical: by the same time, Portuguese were already colonizing East Timor, which lays 385 miles north of Darwin. But if this is true, why didn’t we claim the fifth continent? Because the soil was dry, peoples were ferocious and this territory was in Spain’s share of the World according to Tordesilhas Treaty we signed with them in 1494.

Patriotism? No doubt. I am impressed by Beyond Capricorn, especially that part Trickett writes about the legends aboriginals created after the Portuguese, “men with turtle and crocodile skin”. Anyway we Portuguese are experts in this kind of phenomena. Manoel de Oliveira, our most well-known movie director, just premiered in Cannes a film who stands Colombus was desguised Portuguese serving our King against Spain. It’s funny to see a new and millionnaire business emerging around ‘Portuguese Colombus’, a kind of Iberian Da Vinci Code.

Strange thinks are happening, though. Peter Trickett’s book is very difficult to find either in Australia or Amazon. Evidence about the Portuguese shipwrecks off Australian coast has been sistematically removed. Conservative Anglo-Saxon scholars don’t even want to shed light to this issue.

To make things even worse, the Chinese are also claiming their discovery of Australia. Adressing to the Australian Parliament in Camberra in 2003, President Hu Jintao underlined the presence of the Chinese Treasure Fleet in the big island at the beginning of the 15th century. The British maverick Gavin Menzies wrote the best-seller 1421 and that helps Beijing to also claim Australia. Maybe the Central Committee even financed him — and don’t be surprised if during the Olympic Games the Chinese renew their pioneering in the discovery of the world.

I could continue: the very distant Australia is one of the best exemples of the revisionism to come. And it also shows us the world jumps when there is a leak of information: historians believe the Portuguese reached it in 1522 because they bought the Chinese maps; and that Mendonça’s expedition was also due to the fact a Portuguese traitor, Fernão de Magalhães, was angry with our king and had too many secrets he offered to Spain.

This is amazing food for thought. Sooner or later, the first gold rush to Australia (“The Island of Gold”) and its sensitive nature in a Anglo-Saxonized world will emerge as a virulent topic. More and more we will realize Captain James Cook and British Admiralty cooked History. Yet there is hope: Victoria state has already included the hypothesis of the Portuguese secret discovery of Australia in Primary School manuals. Lucky pupils who can now challenge the Abba axiom: till when will the winner take it all?

This article was published originally in Eesti Ekspress. Click here to read it in Estonian.