"In the beginning the infant beach colony
with its complement of a thousand people,
its remoteness from home,
and its very precarious supply of food and other necessities of life was
vulnerable
to attack by an enemy force.

Intelligence about the presence of...potentially hostile visitors was next to

nothing,

and there was an obvious basis for anxiety about survival.

That direct sort of anxiety about the possibility of being overwhelmed by sea-borne invasion
has never entirely from Australian culture."

Quoted by Dalrymple.