Aborigines Protest, Princess Wilts : 2 Million Hail Australia Bicentennial

Two million Australians threw a party around Sydney’s harbor to wish their country a happy 200th birthday today in a bash attended by the heir to the British throne.

Thousands of aborigines, meanwhile, staged their biggest demonstration ever to protest past wrongs by Australians of European ancestry and what they claim is ongoing discrimination.

Celebrating spectators camped overnight to gain good vantage points and marked Australia Day with champagne, beer, barbecues and a $150,000 fireworks spectacular over the harbor.

Waterfront households held lawn parties to watch a grand parade of sails, including a fleet of ships that re-enacted the voyage of the first European settlers--convicts from England.

In his bicentennial message, Prime Minister Bob Hawke called on Australians to reflect on the country’s heritage and multicultural makeup and said the nation should not feel collective guilt about past wrongs done to aborigines, the country’s original inhabitants.

“It wouldn’t be sensible,” Hawke said.

About 11,000 aborigines converged on Sydney from Australia’s outback and marched through the city of 3.3 million, waving banners, demanding land rights and shouting “Shame! Shame!”

There were no reports of violence.

Prince Charles, son of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, paid tribute to Australia’s advances over 200 years and told the aborigines that Australia is a land worth living in.

“For the original people of this land it must all have seemed very different. And if they should say that their predicament has not yet ended, it would be hard to know how to answer, beyond suggesting that a country free enough to examine its own conscience is a land worth living in, a nation to be envied,” he said.

Charles and Princess Diana watched the parade of ships in Sydney Harbor from HMAS Cook.

Diana, who was without a hat for two hours in temperatures reaching the high 80s, appeared to wilt in the hot sun. She sat down and drank a cup of tea surrounded by guests.

In London, a Buckingham Palace spokesman denied as “absolute nonsense” a report that the princess suffered a dizzy spell and was overcome by the heat.