History of Australia
The history of Australia is the history of the land and peoples which comprise the Commonwealth of Australia. The modern nation came into existence on 1 January 1901 as a federation of former British colonies. The human history of Australia, however, commences with the arrival of the first ancestors of Aboriginal Australians from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and continues to the present day multicultural democracy.
Aboriginal Australians settled throughout continental Australia and many nearby islands. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving in human history. The ancestors of today's ethnically and culturally distinct Torres Strait Islanders arrived from what is now Papua New Guinea around 2,500 years ago, and settled the islands on the northern tip of the Australian landmass.
Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century and named the continent New Holland. Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern coasts from around 1720, and possibly earlier. In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook charted the east coast of Australia and claimed it for Great Britain. He returned to London with accounts favouring colonisation at Botany Bay. The First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a penal colony. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies on the continent, and European explorers ventured into its interior. This period saw a decline in the Aboriginal population and the disruption of their cultures due to introduced diseases, violent conflict and dispossession of their traditional lands. From 1871, the Torres Strait Islanders welcomed Christian Missionaries, and the islands were later annexed by Queensland, choosing to remain a part of Australia when Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia a century later.
Gold rushes and agricultural industries brought prosperity. Transportation of British convicts to Australia was phased out from 1840 to 1868. Autonomous parliamentary democracies began to be established throughout the six British colonies from the mid-19th century. The colonies voted by referendum to unite in a federation in 1901, and modern Australia came into being. Australia fought as part of British Empire and later Commonwealth in the two world wars and was to become a long-standing ally of the United States through the Cold War to the present. Trade with Asia increased and a post-war immigration program received more than 7 million migrants from every continent. Supported by immigration of people from almost every country in the world since the end of World War II, the population increased to more than 25.5 million by 2021, with 30 per cent of the population born overseas.
Indigenous prehistory
The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians moved into what is now the Australian continent about 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the last glacial period, arriving by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia.The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land, in the north of the continent, is perhaps the oldest site of human occupation in Australia. From the north, the population spread into a range of very different environments. Devil's Lair in the extreme south-west of the continent was occupied around 47,000 years ago and Tasmania by 39,000 years ago. The oldest human remains found are at Lake Mungo in New South Wales, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago. The site suggests one of the world's oldest known cremations, indicating early evidence for religious ritual among humans.
The spread of the population also altered the environment. From 46,000 years ago, fire-stick farming was used in many parts of Australia to clear vegetation, make travel easier, and create open grasslands rich in animal and vegetable food sources.
File:Kolaia man.jpg|thumb|Kolaia man wearing a headdress worn in a fire ceremony, Forrest River, Western Australia. Aboriginal Australian religious practices associated with the Dreaming have been practised for tens of thousands of years.
The Aboriginal population faced significant changes in the climate and environment. About 30,000 years ago, sea levels began to fall, temperatures in the south-east of the continent dropped by as much as, and the interior of Australia became more arid. About 20,000 years ago, New Guinea and Tasmania were connected to the Australian continent, which was more than a quarter larger than today.
About 19,000 years ago temperatures and sea levels began to rise. Tasmania became separated from the mainland some 14,000 years ago, and between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago thousands of islands in the Torres Strait and around the coast of Australia were formed.
The warmer climate was associated with new technologies. Small back-bladed stone tools appeared 15–19 thousand years ago. Wooden javelins and boomerangs have been found dating from 10,000 years ago. Stone points for spears have been found dating from 5–7 thousand years ago. Spear throwers were probably developed more recently than 6,500 years ago.
Aboriginal Tasmanians were isolated from the mainland from about 14,000 years ago. As a result, they only possessed one quarter of the tools and equipment of the adjacent mainland. Coastal Tasmanians switched from fish to abalone and crayfish and more Tasmanians moved to the interior.
About 4,000 years ago, the first phase of occupation of the Torres Strait Islands began. By 2,500 years ago more of the islands were occupied and a distinctive Torres Strait Islander maritime culture emerged. Agriculture also developed on some islands and by 700 years ago villages appeared.
Aboriginal society consisted of family groups organised into bands and clans averaging about 25 people, each with a defined territory for foraging. Clans were attached to tribes or nations, associated with particular languages and country. At the time of European contact there were about 600 such groups and 250 distinct languages with various dialects. Estimates of the Aboriginal population at this time range from 300,000 to one million.
Aboriginal society was egalitarian with no formal government or chiefs. Authority rested with elders and group decisions were generally made through the consensus of elders. The traditional economy was cooperative, with males generally hunting large game while females gathered local staples such as small animals, shellfish, vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts. Food was shared within groups and exchanged across groups. Some Aboriginal groups engaged in fire-stick farming, fish farming, and built semi-permanent shelters. The extent to which some groups engaged in agriculture is controversial. Some Anthropologists describe traditional Aboriginal Australia as a "complex hunter-gatherer" society.
Aboriginal groups were semi-nomadic, generally ranging over a specific territory defined by natural features. Members of a group would enter the territory of another group through rights established by marriage and kinship or by invitation for specific purposes such as ceremonies and sharing abundant seasonal foods. As all natural features of the land were created by ancestral beings, a group's particular country provided physical and spiritual nourishment.
Aboriginal Australians developed a unique artistic and spiritual culture. The earliest Aboriginal rock art consists of hand-prints, hand-stencils, and engravings of circles, tracks, lines and cupules, and has been dated to 35,000 years ago. Around 20,000 year ago Aboriginal artists were depicting humans and animals. According to Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land.
Early European exploration
Dutch discovery and exploration
The Dutch East India Company ship,, captained by Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606. Later that year, Luís Vaz de Torres sailed to the north of Australia through Torres Strait, along New Guinea's southern coast.In 1616, Dirk Hartog, sailing off course, en route from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia, landed on an island off Shark Bay, Western Australia. In 1622–23 the ship Leeuwin made the first recorded rounding of the southwest corner of the continent.
In 1627, the south coast of Australia was discovered by François Thijssen and named after Pieter Nuyts. In 1628, a squadron of Dutch ships explored the northern coast particularly in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Abel Tasman's voyage of 1642 was the first known European expedition to reach Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand, and to sight Fiji. On his second voyage of 1644, he also contributed significantly to the mapping of the Australian mainland, making observations on the land and people of the north coast below New Guinea.
Following Tasman's voyages, the Dutch were able to make almost complete maps of Australia's northern and western coasts and much of its southern and south-eastern Tasmanian coasts''.''
British and French exploration
, an English buccaneer and explorer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688 and again in 1699, and published influential descriptions of the Aboriginal people.In 1769, Lieutenant James Cook in command of, travelled to Tahiti to observe and record the transit of Venus. Cook also carried secret Admiralty instructions to locate the supposed Southern Continent. Unable to find this continent, Cook decided to survey the east coast of New Holland, the only major part of that continent that had not been charted by Dutch navigators.
On 19 April 1770, Endeavour reached the east coast of New Holland and ten days later anchored at Botany Bay. Cook charted the coast to its northern extent and formally took possession of the east coast of New Holland on 21/22 August 1770 when on Possession Island off the west coast of Cape York Peninsula.
He noted in his journal that he could;
In March 1772 Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, in command of two French ships, reached Van Diemen's land on his way to Tahiti and the South Seas. His party became the first recorded European to encounter the Indigenous Tasmanians and to kill one of them.
In the same year, a French expedition led by Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn, became the first European to formally claim sovereignty over the west coast of Australia, but no attempt was made to follow this with colonisation.