History

Australia is a contradiction in terms: a nation that is both very old - and very young. The Aboriginal people have been living here for at least 40,000 years, and have made their mark on the continent in many ways. But they have no written history, at least not in a form accessible to the later culture which has been here for only a little over 200 years. So Australia's history is very new.

Very little is known of the early Aboriginal settlers, but it is becoming clear that they were among the earliest people in the world to manufacture polished stone tools and to cremate their dead. They also left a vivid record of themselves and the animals they hunted in rock paintings and carvings. Australian Aborigines probably arrived from Indonesia, and covered the entire continent in a few thousand years. They either brought with them or developed the unique returning throwing stick, the boomerang. They also brought to Australia a complex, sophisticated and varied culture. The estimated 300,000 Aborigines who lived in Australia when British settlement began spoke over 300 different languages, many of them very different from each other.

Europeans come to stay
Of course the story of Australia started long before even the arrival of the Aboriginal people. Geologically, Australia is very stable and very old. This partly explains the continent's mineral riches. It has been separated from other continents for some 200 million years, so it has a range of animals and plants almost unique in the world.

Australia had been visited by numerous European ships, and a thriving trade existed between the Aboriginal people of the far north and their neighbours in Indonesia. But there was no attempt at outside settlement until Captain Phillip's First Fleet dropped anchor in Port Jackson on January 26, 1788.

The great explorer Captain Cook, during an expedition to Tahiti to view the transit of the planet Venus, had landed in Australia and claimed it for the British Crown in 1770. His botanist, Joseph Banks, suggested to the government that this country would make an excellent place for a penal colony, and Phillip was sent. Many of the 750 convicts aboard the fleet had been sentenced to be transported for minor crimes. They found life in New South Wales difficult. The Aborigines were not pleased to see the new arrivals, who promptly declared the land to be uninhabited and simply took it over.

The colony's development was far from smooth. The Australian bush can be a difficult place to tame, and the convicts and later the free settlers battled the climate, the soils, the Aborigines - there were many shameful massacres - and each other. The arrival of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810 marked a distinct improvement. Many of Sydney's outstanding colonial buildings owe their existence to him.

Gold
The exploration of Australia came relatively late, and progressed slowly. Reasons included the inhospitable nature of much of the continent, and the barrier of the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney. Gradually, other settlements were founded, beginning with Hobart in Tasmania. But it was the discovery of gold at Bathurst in 1851 that placed Australia firmly on the world map. This and the many subsequent gold finds attracted a flood of migrants. This led to the rapid economic growth which made a relatively independent Australia possible. Many miners who came for the gold remained as settlers and contributed their skills to the new land.

Modern Australia
The Commonwealth of Australia was created at Federation on January 1, 1901. For many years Australia continued to look to Britain for its culture, traditions, rulers and even cuisine. To this day it is a monarchy: the Queen of Australia is also the Queen of England. Australians fought alongside British troops in a number of conflicts, most notably in both World Wars.

Australia remembers its war dead every year on Anzac Day, commemorating an action during the First World War. During the Second World War Australia began its alliance with the United States of America which shaped much of the country's post-war foreign policy and led to involvement in Vietnam in 1965.

The post-war period saw the beginning of an entire wave of non-British/Irish immigration, which has changed the cultural, psychological and culinary face of Australia. The Immigration Restriction Bill of 1901, more commonly known as the White Australia Policy, had been introduced to prevent the immigration of Asian and Pacific Islander people. It has since been repealed. Australia now has a substantial and growing ethnically Asian population, and is actively concerned with taking its place not only in the region but also with the region's people. Today, Australia is a truly successful multicultural community. There is still much to be done in the struggle for reconciliation with the original inhabitants of the continent, but Australia's many ethnic communities live in peace and - mostly - in harmony.