That opinion is not nuclear physics. Or science.
Is it?
What force propels that meme, and why or how does it endure?
The authors of Oliphant's biography noted that "that was the prevailing attitude of almost the entire white population of Australia until well after World War II"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Oliphant
(Sydney here.) I've known two aborigines well, one was a dear friend for many years[0]. I'd have to say, and they would no doubt agree, that their whole culture–or whatever fragments of traditional culture they've inherited–"makes it difficult for [them] to adapt fully to the ways of the white man". Impossible to adapt very far or very well at all, let alone fully. Just as western culture, I imagine, would make it difficult for white people to "adapt fully to the ways" of aboriginal people if they tried, or to prosper in an aboriginal world, if it still existed. The whole "go to school, get a job, live in a house" thing was very foreign to my two friends, they had nothing of that in their lives. Aborigines didn't do that before white people came here, now that's what you have to do to be considered fully human, or to live decently in a city or town. Aboriginal culture was horribly assaulted for 150+ years, often with genocidal intent.. It's a huge tragic situation, with no easy answers. Australians no longer call it "adapt fully to the ways of the white man", it's just life in modern Australia, but it comes to the same thing.
p.s. Thanks to OP for posting this, I hadn't heard of Nicholls, sounds like an amazing guy and an amazing life.
[0] That was in the last 20 years, in Sydney. I grew up in the 80s in a country NSW town, lots of aborigines in the area, but I don't think I ever even talked with one. There were some at my high school but we never came in contact, at all. They lived in an aboriginal village separate from the main town; white people never went there.
Ok, does that include you? Go! I looked up Wilgie Mia. Apparently a 20-metre deep hole in the ground, an ochre source. Hmm. Couldn't find anything online resembling a school by that name, assuming you don't mean the rock art site whose "existence had been forgotten until its 2006 rediscovery". I'm not sure what "longest successful oral tradition" means exactly. (What does "successful" mean there? Are there unsuccessful oral traditions? And what does it come to besides "no writing system"?) ...And don't we all have "over 67,000 years of culture and heritage"?
Oliphant himself had an interesting life. He discovered the structure of Tritium, was involved in the development of the cavity magnetron (radar) during WW2, and kick-started the Manhattan Project. If you're interested in physics and haven't heard of him, give his Wikipedia page a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Oliphant
the force would be the xenophobia present in some large percentage of every human society, the thing that allows it to endure would the framework of racism.
In basic terms, race describes physical traits, and ethnicity refers to cultural identification.
The physicist simply said that "white man" culture is difficult for natives to adopt or even want to adopt. It is a fairly reasonable statement.