The
history
of Australia is longer than you may think.
Australia is a young
country when it comes to European history.
But
Australia's indigenous people have the longest continuous culture in
the world!
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Aboriginal
History
Aboriginal People are believed to have
arrived in Australia some time up to 60,000 years ago, and they have
the longest continuous culture on Earth. They lived as hunters
and gatherers in different
parts of Australia, in different groups and
tribes, and had at least 300 different languages. They had no written
language and the knowledge was passed on to new generations by arts,
music, dance and storytelling. They had strong beliefs about how the
world was created and how they belonged to the nature. They practiced
religious ceremonies at sacred sites. Aboriginal
People
used their resources
sustainably and knew how to make the most of what was available.
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The lifestyle of a tribe could be very different depending on where
they lived. Australian climatic
regions cover snowy mountains, dry
deserts
and moist rainforests. In
the places with good food
availability they could live at least semi permanently, but in places
with little food they were nomadic. Kinship laws ruled their social
structure, and they were happy people, with a good balance in
life. About
3000-4000 years ago they introduced dingo.
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History of Australia - Torres Strait Islanders
The other group of Australia's indigenous people are Torres Strait
Islanders. They arrived in Australia much later than Aboriginal People,
probably only about 2000 years ago. They are islander people, with
Melanesian and Papua New Guinean background, and they never lived in
large
parts of Australia like Aboriginal People. Torres Strait Islanders live
on Torres
Strait Islands north of the tip of
Cape York
Peninsula in far north Queensland, as well as in a few
mainland communities in northern Cape York. They were more
permanent
than Aboriginal People, and practiced agriculture instead of gathering.
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History of Australia - European Seafarers
In the
early 1600s, when Europeans started getting around in exploration and
search for new colonies, they discovered the continent of Australia.
Like Aboriginals
and Torres Strait Islanders, a lot of the early seafarers first
approached Australia from the north. In the 1600s, some Spanish and
Dutch
seafarers visited, including Abel Tasman who later gave name to
Tasmania.
Different
colonialisation plans were made, but finally
abandoned as it was decided it would cost more than bring any benefit.
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History of Australia - Captain James Cook In the 1700s, British started getting interest in the
Australian
continent. In 1770, Captain James Cook
visited the eastern coast from
south to north, with longer stops in today's Botany Bay (south of
Sydney)
and Cooktown.
It was the coast not previously visited by other
European explorers, and Cook formally claimed the eastern coast of
Australia to England on Possession Island, north-west of the tip of
Cape York peninsula. French and Swedes checked out other coasts with no
colonisation following, before in 1787 England decided to send the
First Fleet to New
South
Wales to start a penal colony.
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History of Australia - Convict Colony
A year later, in 1788, the First Fleet arrived with 11 ships and about
1000 settlers in Botany Bay. Captain Arthur Phillip didn't like Botany
Bay and on the 26 of January - today's Australia Day - they moved to
where Sydney Harbour is today, and started building the colony at the
Rocks and Circular Quay.
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History of Australia -
the Early Days
The times were tough in the beginning as the establishment of
agriculture was difficult and the arrival of supplies far between.
Conditions were poor, diseases spread, and there were wars with
indigenous people. Although many died, the colony survived, and only a
few years later even free settlers started to arrive.
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History of Australia -
New Colonies
A second convict colony was established in Tasmania in the very early
1800s. In the early 1820s, a colony was established in today's
Brisbane.
In the mid-1820s, England claimed
the whole continent of
Australia, and in
the late 1820s, another colony was established in today's Perth.
In the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, new colonies were established in South
Australia, New Zealand, Victoria
and Queensland. Some,
particularly in
South Australia, were free and not convict colonies.
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Large scale land clearing, as well as introduction of European diseases
and introduced
animals had a bad impact on Australia's native ecosystems and
indigenous people. Aborignal People were forced to relocate to reserves
and missions, and there was also a lot of fight and resistance.
In the 1860s, Northern
Territory was founded, but the largest areas of
the continent were still undiscovered (so called "back o' Burke", or
"beyond
the black
stump").
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History of Australia - European Land Exploration
Shorter exploration trips started in the very early 1800s. But from the
mid-1800s onwards, many long exploration trips went from south to north
to the inland as well as today's Darwin,
Gulf
Savannah and Cape
York. Some of the most famous
ones were those of Edmund Kennedy,
Burke and Wills, and John McDouall Stuart.
Edmund Kennedy run a few different expeditions in the 1840s to the
inland of the eastern half of the continent. His last one, to Cape
York, did reach almost to the tip of
the peninsula, but was ill fated
from starters, and ended up with most of the men, including Kennedy
himself, killed.
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In 1860, Burke and Wills
departed from Melbourne
to cross the
inland
eastern half of the continent and reach up to Gulf Savannah. Even that
expedition was a disaster, with both Burke and Wills, and others
killed. They did reach almost to the Gulf Savannah.
Two years later, in 1862, John McDouall Stuart crossed the continent
from Adelaide
in the south to today's
Darwin in the north, much the
same way that the Stuart
Highway goes today.
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Federation - the
Commonwealth
The six British colonies finally
united in a federation in 1901. New South Wales was the first state to
gain a state government, followed by Victoria, Tasmania, South
Australia, Queensland and Western
Australia.
In south-eastern
Australia, cities and population grew.
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History of Australia - Gold
Traces of gold were found in Australia in the early 1800s, however the
first bigger finds were made in Victoria
in the 1850s. Victoria's
population quickly grew to seven times of the pre-gold numbers as
British, Irish, American and Chinese gold diggers started to arrive.
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Later, in the 1870s, there were more findings in Queensland,
particularly in the north, and on Cape York
peninsula. A few decades
later the Western Australia goldfields around Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie
were found.
Gold diggers.
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History of
Australia - the
Bush and the Outback
In the early days, some convicts managed to run away, learn the bush
survival skills and become what was called 'bushrangers'
- people who committed robberies of banks, Cobb & Co
coaches and gold diggers in order to survive in the bush, and
some also rebellious. There were many of them around in the 1850s and
1860s, particularly in the bush in Victoria, but with the population
growth and police improvements things got harder for them. About
the last bushrangers were those of the Ned
Kelly gang, who were finally
caught in 1880 in Glenrowan.
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History of Australia -
Shearers Srtike
and Tree of
Knowledge Outback
Queensland also started
to get inhabited. In 1891, there was
the famous Shearer's Strike that lead to the formation of Australia's
Labour Party. The tree under which the shearer's meetings were hold was
called the Tree of
Knowledge
and stands (now dead) in the main street of Barcaldine.
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History of Australia -
Waltzing Matilda In 1895, Banjo Paterson visited Winton
and the areas around it, and
wrote the popular song Waltzing
Matilda
that was first performed at one of the town's pubs North Gregory Hotel.
The scenes in the song are from Combo Waterhole between Winton and
Kynuna in the outback Queensland.
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History
of Australia - First
World War In the First World War,
Australia fought on Britain's side. The date of the first Australians
to arrive in Gallipoli on the Turkish coast, where more than 8000
Australians were killed, is now celebrated as ANZAC Day to
remember the war
veterans and those who were killed.
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History of Australia - Between the Wars
In 1920, QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service) was
founded. You can still visit the first hangar and the QANTAS museum in
Longreach
in the outback
Queensland. In 1928, the Royal Flying Doctor
Service was founded by John Flynn. There is also a place to learn all
about that - at the John Flynn's Centre in Cloncurry.
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History
of Australia - Second
World War
While
during the First World War Australians fought for Britain in Europe,
the Second World War also came to Asia and Australia. Australian
soldiers first fought for Britain, against Hitler forces in the Middle
East, southern Europe and northern Africa. Then they fought against
Japanese in Papua New Guinea, and allied with the United States. And
finally,
after New Guinea fell, the Japanese started approaching Australia from
the
north.
You can see war bunkers, radar towers, airplane wrecks, and all
kinds of WWII relics today in many coastal places like Darwin, Cape
York and Magnetic
Island, while off
the coast, for example on Atherton
Tablelands, you can still see
remains of training camps.
All the northern towns were prepared. You
can still visit underground hospitals and museums in Mount
Isa and
learn about Darwin bombings in museums in Darwin. There were bombings
and battles even in the south, in places like Sydney and Newcastle.
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History of Australia -
Post War
Immigration
A major problem that Australia had during the Second World War was its
small population compared to its large size. It was hard to defend such
a big piece of land with so few people. So a post war immigration
program was established, which invited Europeans to migrate to
Australia. The timing was good as Australia recovered relatively
quickly from the Second World War
compared to European countries where the economies suffered from large
scale war destruction. Millions arrived as it was easy for the migrants
to find a
job and start a new life
in Australia.
British and Irish, Italians and
Greeks, and a lot of other nationalities including eastern Europeans
fleeing from communism, moved to Australia. It was in those times as
the popular novel They're a Weird Mob was written
by the Australian-born
Irish John O'Grady.
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Triple Alliance with the
UK and US
Over the time, Australia's tight ties with Britain gradually declined,
while those with the US have meant Australian soldiers have since the
Second World War participated in the wars in Korea, Vietnam and
Afganistan.
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Growth of Economy and
Nationalism
During the 1950s and 1960s, things further improved. Wool, wheat and
mineral
industries were doing well, and soon Australia's own car -
Holden - came out. Entertainment industry also grew with the arrival of
TV, locally made comedies and dramas, and programs such as Skippy the Bush
Kangaroo
becoming internationally renown. Australian
country music
also went international for the first time with Slim Dusty's A Pub With No Beer. During the
1970s the first
Australian films such as Sunday Too Far Away,
Picnic at Hanging Rock
and Gallipoli came
out.
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Indigenous people started to get civil rights and be represented in
the parliaments.
Australian Governments started to admit the discrimination and
exclusion that had been practiced in the European history of Australia.
In 2008, Prime Minester Kevin Rudd
said a public sorry to the Aboriginal
stolen generation members.
Note:
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British English, which is the English we use in Australia. You will
find words like "traveller", "harbour" and "realise", and they are all
correct in the language used in Australia.
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