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Discovering spirit of Australia

By David Cusworth - posted Sunday, 12 June 2011


Who discovered Australia?

Most would say, 'Captain Cook in 1770', though others might defer to William Dampier in 1688; Englishmen both, one a naval officer the other a pirate.

Others will note that Dutchman Abel Tasman beat them to the punch, sighting Tasmania in 1642.

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In fact Abel Janszoon Tasman was trumped a generation earlier by the captain of the Duyfken, Willem Janszoon Blaeu, who in 1606 sighted the north coast of the unknown south land.

All were stout Protestants in contrast to the many Catholics who first made landfall in the Americas, but they were not without a curious rival, the Portuguese Pedro Fernando de Quiros, who claimed the main island of Vanuatu for Spain, also in 1606.

Quiros claimed it at Pentecost, May 14, for the Habsburg king Phillip II in the name of La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo - not, as might be supposed, the "Southland" but the "Austrian Land" of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, wearing funny hats and hanging around in shorts are habits of both countries, Austraya and Austria. Beyond that their fates diverge.

A Habsburg ascendancy, Catholic and Spanish-speaking, might literally have put us to work for the Pacific Peso, though independence might have come sooner with the collapse of Spanish Imperialism in the 19th century when British power was on the rise.

A case of swings and roundabouts, you might say, unless you believe in Australia as the Southland of the Holy Spirit.

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In 1606 the Duyfken, or dove, hovered over our Protestant origins as the Spirit moved above the deep at the Earth's creation and its symbol, a dove, flew over the deluge at the world's recreation through Noah's Flood.

Did that protective Spirit deflect Quiros, halting the Hispanic hegemony far to the east and securing the great continent for vigorous Protestant work ethic and high public morals? That might explain why many sailed near but few sighted Australia until the British were ready to claim sovereignty. Quiros' deputy, Luis Vaz de Torres, went looking for him in waters off our north coast which now bear his name, but he did not claim the land.

If the theory holds water, Australia is the last inhabited continent to know the coming of the light, as the arrival of Christian missionaries in Torres Strait is remembered, because God decided its fate.

So the Holy Spirit dis-covered Australia because previously the land had been hidden.

Why else should we have an island chain named after Whitsunday, the day James Cook happened upon that picturesque place?

It's the sort of tendentious thinking that goes with "British Israel" – the idea that the Lost Tribes of the northern Hebrew kingdom became the Anglo-Saxon peoples spread across the globe.

Or maybe Whitsunday, celebrated this weekend, plays a symbolic role in our story.

On the first Pentecost – the 50th day after Passover/Easter, marked as a harvest festival in the Jewish calendar – people of all known lands were present and heard the first Christians speaking in their own languages by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

When early modern scholars began to look at the original New Testament texts, written in the common or 'Koine' Greek of the Hellenic world – a coarser, simpler version of the classical prose of Homer – some thought this was the miraculous universal language of the Pentecost, rediscovered after many years of Roman-ordained Latin scripture and liturgy.

As a naïve theological student a few years ago, it was tempting to hope that a Pentecost miracle might relieve the long hours of study and avert the dreaded Greek exam.

But as Kiwi scholar E.M. Blaiklock has written: "It was a gift rapidly withdrawn."

Saints Peter, Paul and the other apostles had to soldier on with the languages of their day - Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin – and the Bible has since been translated into as many languages as the world has thrown up.

Yet something clearly happened at Pentecost, a rush of inspiration which led cynics to assume the Christians were drunk.

"Penetrating clarity and compelling precision are sometimes achieved by simple men in moments of high emotion," Blaiklock comments.

Or as Peter has it: "These are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning."

He was talking to people from all over the known world, a group that excludes our New World, the Southland of the Holy Spirit, or the cynical response might have been: "Beer, so much more than a breakfast drink."

Nonetheless, the penetration of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to the New World, north and south, effectively gave rise to English as the new universal language.

Australia several times came close to being colonised by another tongue – twice in 1606, and again at La Perouse in 1788. If the French explorer La Perouse had beaten Arthur Phillip to Sydney Cove, rather than drifting off to a watery grave somewhere far to the north, perhaps we would be taming 'Strine through the office of the Academie Australiennne, even banning the burqa from public places.

Australia would have been different, yet it is the most completely English-speaking continent while also clinging to the great hope of multiculturalism.

Without multiculturalism, our post-modern society would not be possible – and nor would a universal church.

History turns in a moment and Pentecost is such a moment – the sudden outreach of the Christian faith to people beyond the confines of Israel, however you read the miraculous gift of speaking in tongues.

Of course, it took more than one speech in Jerusalem to create a worldwide movement, and multicultural Australia remains a work in progress.

But if one transformation can inform and inspire another, then maybe we can still dream of that fabled holy-day in the Whitsundays.

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About the Author

David Cusworth is a Western Australian writer.

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