Today I read an online news article about a 12 year old boy who discovered a antique Portuguese swivel gun near Darwin. What first struck me about this story was the wording of the opening line "boy may help re-write Australia's history after unearthing what he believes is a 500-year-old Portuguese swivel gun." The part that I focus on is 'he believes', reporters are known for the level of research they supposedly put into their articles, and I don't know about you but as a 12 year old I had trouble getting my mother to believe that I had cleaned my room when I actually had, and this reporter seems to have based his entire article on what a 12 year old believes. I hope it doesn't turn out that his imaginary friend advised him it was a Portuguese swivel gun!
I did in fact read further into the article and it appears that the reporter has done a little more research than just asking the little boy, it appears that what he found is actually genuinely thought, by the Darwin museum, to be a Portuguese swivel gun. The museum has yet to examine the find closely to verify this fact, but will do so in the near future. Anyway I digress, this was what I thought about reading the article, what I learnt was that Portugal occupied Timor from 1515 until 1975 and it has been a hotly contested supposition that Portugal may have visited Australia prior to Captain Cook or the Dutch! This I never knew, I had only heard about Timor in regards to Indonesia wanting to occupy East Timor and Australia moving in as a peace keeping force a few years ago, I had no idea that it had been occupied by the Portuguese until less than 40 years ago! The more I learn about modern history the more I realise that the world as I know it today has not really looked this way for all of even my short lifetime, and makes me wonder when I am twice as old as I am today what the world will look like!
If you would like to read the article it was on The Age website.
Another random learning!
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