Akker Dakker and a dash of terram stultus ...

(Above: Abel Tasman on his second voyage in 1644, published in 1744 by Emanuel Bowen with this text added:"It is impossible to conceive a Country that promises fairer from its Situation than this of TERRA AUSTRALIS, no longer incognita, as this Map demonstrates, but the Southern Continent Discovered. It lies precisely in the richest climates of the World....and therefore whoever perfectly discovers and settles it will become infalliably possessed of Territories as Rich, as fruitful, and as capable of Improvement, as any that have hitherto been found out, either in the East Indies or the West...")

Careful luvvies, Akker Dakker is on the prowl, and he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it any more, especially you bloody luvvies ...

He's outraged, outraged and shocked, the pond gathers, because of all the historical inaccuracies revolving around the Aldi T-shirt debate.

This from a man notorious for producing inaccuracies, howlers and goofballs. But do go on:

Discount supermarket chain Aldi was correct to pull an Australia Day T-shirt and singlet carrying the message "Australia Est. 1788" from its stores. 
 It was inaccurate, though that was not the point the Twitterati hoped to make. Australia wasn't officially branded as such until navigator Matthew Flinders decided to give the landmass the name in 1804. As he wrote to his brother: "I call the whole island Australia, or Terra Australis." 
Australia the independent nation wasn't established until 1901, but that's hardly the point. Those who have been protesting to Aldi via knee-jerk antisocial media are the usual attention-seeking rabble who come out around Australia Day to reiterate the never disputed point that there were people living on the continent before 1788.

Oh dear. So it's all Matthew Flinders work?

What a pity poor old, hapless, inept, and rapidly approaching his use by date Akker Dakker didn't do a Greg Hunt, and take a minute to google up a wiki dedicated to the very subject of Terra Australis:

The notion of Terra Australis was introduced by Aristotle. His ideas were later expanded by Ptolemy (1st century AD), who believed that the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land, and that the lands of the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south. Marcus Tullius Cicero used the term cingulus australis ("southern zone") in referring to the Antipodes in Somnium Scipionis ("Dream of Scipio"). The land (terra in Latin) in this zone was the Terra Australis. 
Legends of Terra Australis Incognita—an "unknown land of the South"—date back to Roman times and before, and were commonplace in medieval geography, although not based on any documented knowledge of the continent.

And so on and so forth:

The Flemish geographer and cartographer, Cornelius Wytfliet, wrote concerning the Terra Australis in his 1597 book, Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum: 
The terra Australis is therefore the southernmost of all other lands, directly beneath the antarctic circle; extending beyond the tropic of Capricorn to the West, it ends almost at the equator itself, and separated by a narrow strait lies on the East opposite to New Guinea, only known so far by a few shores because after one voyage and another that route has been given up and unless sailors are forced and driven by stress of winds it is seldom visited. The terra Australis begins at two or three degrees below the equator and it is said by some to be of such magnitude that if at any time it is fully discovered they think it will be the fifth part of the world. Adjoining Guinea on the right are the numerous and vast Solomon Islands which lately became famous by the voyage of Alvarus Mendanius.

The wiki even has a splendid map by said Cornelius showing ... Terra Australis (click to enlarge):

As for Flinders? Let the wiki take up the story again:

In 1814, Matthew Flinders published the book A Voyage to Terra Australis in which he wrote: 
There is no probability, that any other detached body of land, of nearly equal extent, will ever be found in a more southern latitude; the name Terra Australis will, therefore, remain descriptive of the geographical importance of this country, and of its situation on the globe: it has antiquity to recommend it; and, having no reference to either of the two claiming nations, appears to be less objectionable than any other which could have been selected. 
...with the accompanying note at the bottom of the page: 
Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into AUSTRALIA; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth. 
Flinders had concluded that the Terra Australis as hypothesized by Aristotle and Ptolemy did not exist, so he wanted the name applied to what he saw as the next best thing: "Australia". 
His conclusion would soon be revealed as a mistake, but by that time the name had stuck.


Yep, like Akker Dakker himself, the naming of Australia was a bloody big mistake. All Flinders did was rip off the ancients, vary a couple of letters, and get it bloody wrong. Aussies, oi, oi, oi.

As the wiki also notes, the real Terra Australis - Antarctica - would be sighted in 1820.

Here it is, thanks to the wiki, as imagined in 1657 by Jan Janssonius (click to enlarge):

As always, there are more things dreamed of in the universe than Akker Dakker's feeble imaginings and Anglo-centric worldview.

If you wanted to get picky, you might also like to quibble about whether Australia became an independent nation in 1901. After all:

...for several decades after the Commonwealth came into being in 1901, the Australian Government itself was unsure as to whether it could even declare war against another country without British Government approval. (and more on that here in pdf form) 

Independent and you couldn't even bung on a do without seeking permission from the Poms? That's independence? Cue WW1... and throw in an Aussies oi, oi, oi if you like.

Billy Bunter howlers aside, what to make of this flourish by an agitated Akker Dakker alarmed that people might think there were no people living in Terra Australis, or was that Antarctica, before 1788?

No one has argued with that - no one - but as usual the professional activists get their moment in the spotlight as they did when, egged on by spin doctors within the office of former minority Labor prime minister Julia Gillard, they discredited themselves with their disgraceful riot outside Canberra's Lobby restaurant on Australia Day, 2012. 
To find the "Australia Est. 1788" slogan racist is finding a wrongdoing where none could have been identified except by a Salem witch hunter circa 1692.

A Salem witch hunter circa 1692? Let loose in Terra Australis in 2014?

WTF? What about Murdochian commie and socialist and greenie hunters circa 2014? Now there's a metaphor that fits the bill.

There is of course only one set of witch hunters worthy of the name, and that's the crony commentariat and the Murdochian hacks, determined to be offensive.

I mean, you have to be totally up yourself to berate others for being professional activists when you're a paid propagandist and hack without an independent bone in your body - so one-eyed that 'professional activist' barely seems to cover what's going down. Even "rabid activist" barely gets close ...

If you read on, you can see a real professional activist at work, offensive, insulting, berating, stone-throwing in all the usual Murdoch ways:

This continent didn't have one name when it was occupied by successive migrations over the past 40,000 years. The inhabitants only gave specific names to their areas, with generalised names for regions beyond their range. 
Aldi and Big W, which removed items bearing similar slogans, have paid a big price in bowing to the humourless watchdogs. 

Reading that, you might get the sense that Akker Dakker is full of humour, but is there any better example of a humourles watchdog watching the humourless watchdogs?

And what big price have they paid? A few T-shirts probably printed for next to nothing by workers grateful the factory didn't burn down that day?

True, Akker's a great source of comedy:

(more on Akermangate here).

(more on Piers' porkies here)

But he really doesn't live up to the family tradition:

Instead, what do we get for a closer? The usual: Fairfax and the Ruddster, as if the Ruddster still carried weight:

Reports of backdowns to the internet twits in the Fairfax media noted the "seven designs had been approved by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in July last year, after passing guidelines regarding products bearing the Australian flag". 
That would be the department responsible to former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, whose empty apology to indigenous Australians captivated the luvvies but left indigenous people as poorly-educated and lacking in health resources or employment opportunities as they were before the Canberra love-in. How racist and culturally-insensitive was that?

Actually that apology captured a few more people than the luvvies and some of them were indigenous, and none of them were as culturally insensitive or offensive as Akker Dakker attempts on an almost daily basis.

And as for attempts to improve the lot of indigenous people, how strange that Akker Dakker never mentions the Howard government and its invasion of the Northern Territory, surely the most singular failure in a long list of failures by governments of all hues and ideologies ...

Is there an explanation? Well try decoding the messages embedded in Akker Dakker's piece, and you'll get a ripe sense of the hostility to Aboriginal people which seeps through everything he scribbles, especially those who dare to take a view on Invasion Day ...

That's when he's not being a clown about Peppa Pig, just like Jerry Falwell was a clown about Tinky Winky, and the Bolter was a clown about Finding Nemo ... (and more on their clowning here).

Still, Peppa gave Akker Dakker his moment of internet glory, as a meme, thanks in part to The Project: