🎧 Chapter 2 – Part 1: The Invaders Arrive

In this opening section of Chapter 2, Francis Firebrace recounts the moment paradise was shattered. With warmth and clarity, he describes the arrival of the First Fleet from the perspective of the Guringai people, who initially believed the pale-skinned British might be ancestral spirits. What began with generosity and trust — sharing food, water, and medicine — quickly turned into betrayal, violence, and systemic destruction.

Francis lays out how the British misunderstood and disrespected Aboriginal culture, wrongly assuming Indigenous people were less than human. The settlers shot Aboriginals for accessing their own water, fenced off sacred land, and used poison, disease, and violence to wipe out entire communities. This episode challenges listeners to understand the true nature of early contact — not as discovery, but invasion. The Dreamtime was interrupted not by progress, but by brutal displacement.

It’s a sobering start to a vital reckoning — told by someone born into the aftermath, yet whose memory carries the voices of those who came before.