“[We hope for] a future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.”  — Kevin Rudd, Apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples, February 13, 2008.

In his 2014 book Dark Emu, writer and historian Bruce Pascoe has claimed that the pre-settlement, Aboriginal population of Australia maintained a sophisticated agrarian civilisation; domesticating crops, irrigating the landscape, milling grain and engineering large ‘towns’ and ‘villages’.