The continent's vast interior - "the bush" - captured the first settler's imagination, giving the colonies their mythology of shearers, miners and bushrangers. (Before 1903, a swim during daylight hours could get you arrested.) But as the 20th Century dawned, the coastal cities boomed and rural life was eclipsed by the new nation's factory jobs and suburbs.

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Meanwhile a squabble with Lithuania has annoyed neighbours that would prefer to see Poland as a leader, not a score-settler.

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Consisting of just 13 original settler cabins and safari-style tents, Dunton has a dance hall, saloon, and every imaginable outdoor activity, from horseback riding to downhill skiing.

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In KwaZulu-Natal, a dispute over land owned by the mixed-race descendants of a Scottish settler has led to annual arson attacks on their fields of sugar cane.

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When Kenya's colonial government crumbled in 1963, Wambugu's father was rounded up--like so many young men--and trucked off to work on a white settler's farm.

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But the Israeli leader still faces fierce opposition from the well-organised and vociferous settler movement and its political backers, including many in his own Likud party.

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Mr Mordechai, a relative moderate in Israel's hardline government, bears the brunt of settler anger: the tone of a week-long vigil by radicals outside his suburban Jerusalem home was nastily reminiscent of the anti-Rabin demonstrations in the weeks before the late prime minister was killed.

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And the American settler uprising that began in 1775 was essentially a reflection of the tensions between this private-enterprise notion of empire and the growing financial burden of securing it both from rival European colonial powers and from displaced indigenous peoples.

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