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The proposals for the use of a southern continent had a history almost as long though by no means so distinguished as the history of its discovery. Some saw it as land dedicated to the Holy Spirit; some saw it as a land fit only for the refuse of society, on the principle that the political body, like the human body, is often troubled with vicious humours, which one must often evacuate.

— Manning Clark

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Australians must decide for themselves whether this was the land of the dreaming, the land of the Holy Spirit, the New Britannia, the Millennial Eden, or the new demesne for Mammon to infest.

A turbulent emptiness seized the people as they moved into a post-Christian, post-Enlightenment era. No one any longer knew the direction of the river of life. No one had anything to say.

By the middle of the seventeenth century the Dutch had written the very first page in the history of European civilization in Australia by stating that there was no good to be done there. William Dampier popularized this idea amongst the English reading public half a century later.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Manning Clark (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.