VADR

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire

Happy Australia Day. Respect to my forebears, and to the Traditional Custodians of the land, past and present, in New South Wales and the South Island of New Zealand, including my Ngāi Tahu whakapapa. From the Second Fleet Neptune (1790) and Third Fleet Britannia (1791), to early NSW↔NZ trade and settlement — including intermarriage with Ngāi Tahu when New Zealand was still administered from New South Wales, prior to the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). The family line includes convicts and soldiers of the New South Wales Corps (later the 102nd Regiment), whalers, traders, moonshiners, land grants and purchases, Native Land Court battles, coups and insurrections — and the brutal frontier realities of early colonial life, including the Hawkesbury–Nepean Wars (1795–1816), where First Nations peoples fiercely resisted dispossession and defended their land. On the New Zealand side, frontier lives intersected early: Richard Driver, Otago Harbour’s first pilot and a stranded whaler, married Motoitoi, daughter of Kāi Tahu chief Kahuti, and later piloted my Highland family line into Otago — alongside the wider Sydney Green/Bates story. Worlds meeting at the edge of the known world. These were hard and often brutal times. As golden pioneers, they showed real fortitude on real frontiers — and, despite everything, welcomed new settlers from all corners of the world and many faiths, seeking a new life. 235 years on, the family loop carries on — back and forth across the Tasman, generation after generation. Happy Australia Day. – at Maianbar, New South Wales

Over 60 ban on Social Media in Australia. youtu.be/qrPM1WSGpIw?si=ggBZ… – at Maianbar, New South Wales

Starlink destroying the Ozone layer. youtu.be/7lhNS_kFCSg?si=-Whl…