The case reversed a previous legal fiction called " terra nullius, " which held that Australia was an empty land when the first white settlers arrived in 1788.
42.
This is in direct contrast to the situation in Australia where the continent was declared Terra nullius, or vacant land, and was seized from Aboriginal peoples without compensation.
43.
In 1992, the High Court of Australia handed down its decision in the Mabo Case, declaring the previous legal concept of " terra nullius " to be invalid.
44.
This ruling reversing a previous legal fiction of " terra nullius, " which held that Australia was an empty land when the first white settlers arrived in 1788.
45.
Singapore argued that Pedra Branca was " terra nullius ", and that there was no evidence the island had ever been under the sovereignty of the Johor Sultanate.
46.
*" " It was as if we were never there in our naked bodies and in being naked we were made invisible to the coloniser; we were terra nullius bodies.
47.
Its " terra nullius " status results from a discrepancy between the straight political boundary between Egypt and Sudan established in 1899, and the irregular administrative boundary established in 1902.
48.
He was the first European to explore the island and, due to his interaction with Aboriginal Tasmanians, was the first person to show that Tasmania was not " terra nullius ".
49.
The island could not at any relevant time have been " terra nullius " as it is and had always been part of Johor, which is now a state of Malaysia.
50.
Therefore they thought this was an empty country, " Terra Nullius, " which could be occupied without compensation, a myth that the land-hungry white settlers who started arriving in 1788 happily perpetuated.
