History Wars: late 21st Century

History Wars: Onward and Forward
By: Michael Connors
Wednesday 30 August 2006
new Matilda


Education in New Australia is just getting back on its feet. Although there are few resources, no texts, and teachers rely on the memory of demented old Australians, the teaching profession is increasingly confident that New History can be written.

Serving a population of 20,000 children on this small island is a cohort of young post-mutant teachers. They are proving able to instil in the minds of our young a regard for narrative and facts. Still there are many gaps in our knowledge, signified by the question marks that appear throughout the following report.



After the Global Flood (which the Turnbull Government claimed was going to be like a swim in a toddler’s pool) and the Great Nuclear War (which the same Government claimed was the final strike against the Islamo-fashionist terror of Europe), much of the social, political and economic infrastructure of Old Australia was devastated.

The new digital city of Onward (?) — named in honour of the longest sitting Prime Minister in Old Australia’s history — was wiped out. It is said that when the first missile hit, John Onward, retired and approaching his 100th birthday, was re-learning how to count with his favourite Minister, Abbott Costello. Both were beneficiaries of the new stool-stem research of the time.

Grand Court Gerontocrat Kevin Rudd, appointed Governor of Australia by the Chinese Rehabilitation Forces (may we be thankful for their presence), has now forgotten how to speak English and through translation from the Mandarin we understand that he merely repeats, ‘No John, that is not a shooting star; that is not a shooting star.’ This will be the title of our Year Zero history book: Not a Shooting Star.

As for the cause of Old Australia’s destruction, no one is sure if New American Empire missiles mistakenly turned on Australia or if the crackpots in Europe decided that if they were going down, then so were we. The Chinese Rehabilitation Forces (may we be thankful for their presence) have instructed us to ignore Old Australia and to begin our history from Year Zero and then move quickly to the era of the Chinese Rehabilitation Forces (may we be thankful for their presence).

There are those of us who seek at least to remember some moments of Old Australia, as it existed to our North. Unfortunately, there was not a single library or digital database left standing after the Great Flood and War. Any carbon-based text found after the War was used to warm scarred bodies in winter. It is surprising, too, that not a single copy of the mass-produced compulsory high school text Advance Australia survives. Written by G Makawish (?), many of our demented elderly remember it fondly.



We understand that sometime early in the century, the Onward Government, on the advice of learned academics, required schools to teach a linear narrative — and the narrative was ‘onward and forward’ — a happy coincidence of name and policy. Makawish’s history served that purpose. Oral historians have made great efforts to commit to memory key aspects of the book by speaking to the less demented elderly among us.

Some of the fragments that we have established include:

How Australian Aborigines welcomed White Australians and then got drunk and needed a long period of guardianship. An eminent Australian historian by the name of John Hurt (?) reputedly sought a return to 19th century local governors to ensure the wellbeing of the Indigenous peoples. We are not sure of the veracity of this history, but we do know that Indigenous peoples are now key to the survival of de-electrified, non coal-fired New Australia. So we now have John Hurt Day to commemorate the Onward Government’s visionary thinking in maintaining Aboriginal heritage and local knowledge. The Chinese, for reasons we cannot ascertain, chuckle about this.

Old Australians fought in 15 wars against Islamo-fashion terrorists. The first, in the late 19th century led to the liberation of White people from Black Muslims who sought to enslave White pioneers. More recently, the Muslim fashion empire in Europe under Hirohito and Stalhit (?) was defeated by a grand coalition of freedom-loving Old Australians and Americans. It seems a donkey was central to the victory. Despite this, the Islamic worm turned and renewed its hold over Europe, despite calls by respectable Rotary-going members that Christians should breed, and a lot.

In the first decade of the new millennium, Australia petitioned for statehood with the New American Empire. President Clinton (?) — no one remembers if this was a man or a woman — accepted the petition and stationed strategic weapon systems here to defeat Islamo-fashionism in Europe and Iceland.

The Introductory Chapter to Advance Australia is said to have decried the standards of teaching in Old Australia, and called for abidance with the following principles:

Patriotism — love of place and nation
Datism — expression of that love by knowing when the good things happened
Matism — the good times
Onwardism — always thinking of the future, not backwards

We can report that the recent Onward History Summit made progress with rediscovering the pre-History of New Australia and we now feel confident that in so doing we will be in a better position to write our own future.

While the Chinese Rehabilitation Forces (may we be thankful for their presence) are firm that we should not return to Old Australian history — it is only on that basis that we can go ‘onward and forward.’