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About Early Australia
The first human habitation of Australia is estimated to have occurred between 42,000 and 48,000 years ago.
These first Australians were possibly the ancestors of the current Indigenous Australians. They may have arrived via land bridges and short sea-crossings from present-day South-East Asia. Most of these people were hunter-gatherers, with a complex oral culture and spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime.
The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, inhabited the Torres Strait Islands and parts of far-north Queensland. Their cultural practices were and remain distinct from those of the Aborigines.
Lieutenant James Cook charted the east coast of Australia on HM Bark Endeavour, claiming the land for Great Britain in 1770.
The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland was made by the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, who sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in 1606. During the 17th century, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines of what they called New Holland, but they made no attempt at settlement.
In 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast of Australia, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The expedition's discoveries provided impetus for the establishment of a penal colony there.
The British Crown Colony of New South Wales started with the establishment of a settlement at Port Jackson by Captain Arthur Phillip on 26 January 1788.
This date was later to become Australia's national day, Australia Day.
Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, was settled in 1803 and became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the western part of Australia in 1829. Separate colonies were created from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia. South Australia was founded as a "free province"—that is, it was never a penal colony. Victoria and Western Australia were also founded "free" but later accepted transported convicts.
By 1820, 30,000 convicts and 4500 free settlers had arrived in the colony. The free settlers set up farms and businesses as the colony continued to prosper. Although the convicts endured many hardships in the early days, many eventually acquired respectability as a result of hard work and the skills many of them had in trades and professions.
From 1788 until penal transportation ended in 1868, about 160,000 men and women were brought to Australia as convicts.
In the first years after settlement very little was known about the interior of the continent or its vast coastline. There was increasing pressure to find land for farming and sheep grazing as well as new sources of fresh water and sites for other settlements.
Many explorers undertook difficult and hazardous expeditions north and south along the coast and west into the inland looking for a way across a line of mountains known as the Great Dividing Range. Later, others went into some of Australia’s most inhospitable interiors, including the arid Nullarbor Plain and central and north–west Australia. Many lost their lives.
During the next three decades, settlers followed in the footsteps of the inland explorers and spread out across much of the habitable parts of the continent.
The growth of the wool industry and the discovery of gold in New South Wales and Victoria in 1851 resulted in huge increases in the number of free settlers coming to Australia.
Australia’s total population trebled from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871.
Most of these new arrivals were British, but they also included people from the Americas, France, Italy, Germany, Poland and Hungary.
About 40,000 Chinese also came to Australia in search of gold – the single biggest group after the British.
Created on 04/03/2010 12:27 AM by Rod
Updated on 04/03/2010 12:29 AM by Rod
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