History of Australia

Australia’s original inhabitants, known as Australian Aborigines, have the longest continuous cultural history in the world, with origins dating back to the last Ice Age. Although mystery and debate shroud many aspects of Australian prehistory, it is generally accepted that the first humans travelled across the sea from Indonesia about 70,000 years ago. The first visitors, called ‘Robust’ by archaeologists because of their heavy-boned physique, were followed 20,000 years later by the more slender ‘Gracile’ people, the ancestors of Australian Aborigines.

Europeans began to encroach on Australia in the 16th century: Portuguese navigators were followed by Dutch explorers and the enterprising English pirate William Dampier. Captain James Cook sailed the entire length of the eastern coast in 1770, stopping at Botany Bay on the way. After rounding Cape York, he claimed the continent for the British and named it New South Wales.

In 1779, Joseph Banks (a naturalist on Cook’s voyage) suggested that Britain could solve overcrowding problems in its prisons by transporting convicts to New South Wales. In 1787, the First Fleet set sail for Botany Bay under the command of Captain Arthur Philip, who was to become the colony’s first governor. The fleet comprised 11 ships, 750 male and female convicts, four companies of marines and supplies for two years. Philip arrived in Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, but soon moved north to Sydney Cove, where there was better land and water. For the new arrivals, New South Wales was a harsh and horrible place, and the threat of starvation hung over the colony for at least 16 years.

Australia never experienced the systematic push westward that characterised the European settlement of America. Early exploration and expansion took place for one of three reasons: to find suitable places of secondary punishment, like the barbaric penal settlements at Port Arthur in Van Diemen’s Land and on Norfolk Island; to occupy land before anyone else arrived; or in later years, because of the quest for gold.

Free settlers began to be attracted to Australia over the next decades, but it was the discovery of gold in the 1850s that changed the face of the colony. The huge influx of migrants and several large finds boosted the economy and irrevocably changed the colonial social structures. Aborigines were ruthlessly pushed off their tribal lands as new settlers took up land for farming or mining. The Industrial Revolution in England required plenty of raw materials, and Australia’s agricultural and mineral resources expanded to meet the demand.

Australia became a nation when federation of the separate colonies took place on 1 January 1901 (although many of the legal and cultural ties with England remained). Australian troops fought alongside the British in the Boer War and WWI. Interestingly, while Australians rallied to the aid of Britain during WWI, the majority of voters were prepared to support voluntary military service only. Efforts to introduce conscription during the war led to bitter debate, both in parliament and in the streets, and in referenda compulsory national service was rejected.

Australia was hard hit by the Depression; prices for wool and wheat - two mainstays of the economy - plunged. In 1931 almost a third of breadwinners were unemployed and poverty was widespread. Swagmen became a familiar sight, as they had been in the 1890s depression, as thousands of men took to the ‘wallaby track’ in search of work in the countryside. By 1933, however, Australia’s economy was starting to recover, a result of rises in wool prices and a rapid revival of manufacturing.

When WWII broke out, Australian troops fought alongside the British in Europe but after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Australia’s own national security finally began to take priority. Singapore fell, the northern Australian towns of Darwin and Broome and the New Guinean town of Port Moresby were bombed, the Japanese advanced southward. In appalling conditions, Australian soldiers confronted and defeated the Japanese at Milne Bay, east of Port Moresby, and began the long struggle to push them from the Pacific. Ultimately it was the USA that helped protect Australia from the Japanese, defeating them in the Battle of the Coral Sea. This event was to mark the beginning of a profound shift in Australia’s allegiance away from Britain and towards the USA.

Post WWII immigration brought a flood of European immigrants, many of them non-British. The immigrants have since made an enormous contribution to the country, enlivening its culture and broadening its vision. The post-war era was a boom time in Australia as its raw materials were once again in great demand.

In the 1950s Australia came to accept the American view that it was not so much Asia but communism in Asia that threatened the increasingly Americanised Australian way of life. Accordingly, Australia followed the USA into the Korean War, and in 1965, Australia committed troops to assist the USA in the Vietnam War, though support for involvement was far from absolute. Still more troubling for many young Australian men was the fact that conscription was introduced in 1964, and those undertaking national service could now be sent overseas. By 1967 as many as 40% of Australians serving in Vietnam were conscripts.

The civil unrest aroused by conscription was one factor that contributed to the 1972 rise to power of the Australian Labor Party, under the leadership of Gough Whitlam. The Whitlam government withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam, abolished national service and higher-education fees, instituted a system of free and universally available health care, and supported land rights for Aboriginal people.

The government, however, was hampered by a hostile Senate and by much talk of mismanagement. On 11 November 1975, the governor general (the British monarch’s representative in Australia) took the unprecedented step of dismissing the parliament and installing a caretaker government led by the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, Malcolm Fraser. Labor supporters were appalled - the powers that the governor general had been able to invoke had long been regarded by many as an anachronistic vestige of Australia’s now remote British past. Nevertheless, it was a conservative Liberal and National Country Party coalition that won the ensuing election. A Labor government was not returned until 1983, when a former trade union leader, Bob Hawke, led the party to victory.

After a period of recession and high unemployment in the early 1990s, the electorate eventually lost faith in the Labor government, and in early 1996, Labor leader Paul Keating was defeated in a landslide victory to the conservative coalition, led by John Howard.

The issue of republicanism - replacing Britain’s queen with an Australian president as head of state - dominated Australian politics in the late 1990s. An increasing number of people, particularly young Australians, felt that constitutional ties with Britain were no longer relevant and the only way forward was to declare Australia a republic. However, a national referendum in 1999 resulted in a comprehensive victory for the status quo

EARLY HISTORY
50,000 BC

Archaeological discoveries indicate that Australian Indigenous history and culture dates back as far as 5000 years.

The first settlers are thought to have arrived around 50,000 years ago. This would have most likely been at a time when the sea levels were low, the land was more humid and animals larger.

Although much of Australia became populated, the central dry areas didn’t attract settlers until around 25,000 years ago. The population grew proportionately quicker around 10,000 years ago as the climate improved.

At the time of British settlement at Sydney Cove it is estimated that 300,000 aboriginal people, speaking around 250 languages inhabited Australia.

On arrival, finding no obvious political structure, the Europeans took the land as their own. The Indigenous people were driven out of their homes and many killed. Various new European diseases spread rapidly amongst the indigenous people, killing many. The introduction of feral and domestic animals contributed to the destruction of natural habitats.

Fighting wiped out the Aboriginal population in Tasmania and greatly reduced the numbers in the rest of Australia.

During the early part of the 20th century legislation’s were passed to segregate and protect Aboriginals. This involved restrictions on where they could live and work and families being broken up.

After World War II, assimilation became the governments aim. All rights were taken away from the Aboriginals and attempts made to ‘Europeanise’ them.

During the 1960’s the legislation was reviewed and the Federal Government passed legislation for all Aboriginals to be given citizen status. However, it wasn’t until 1972 that the indigenous people were given back limited rights to their own land. The situation has been steadily improving for Australia’s Indigenous people , although many feel more needs to be done.

17th CENTURY
1606
The first European sightings of Australia were made by a Dutchman called William Jansz on the Duyfken (Little Dove).
1642
The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman lands in Tasmania.

18th CENTURY
1770
Captain Cook lands in Botany Bay on the Eastern side of Australia and claims New South Wales for Britain.
1788
The First Fleet arrives at Sydney Cove under Captain Arthur Phillip to establish the first settlement in Australia. This was to be a penal colony - Sydney was founded.

19th CENTURY
1801 - 1899 - The great age of exploration: coastal surveys (Bass, Flinders), interior (Sturt, Eyre, Leichhardt, Burke and Willis, McDouall Stuart, Forrest). Also the era of the bushrangers, overlanders, and squatters, and individuals such as William Buckley and Ned Kelly.
1803 - Mathew Flinders completes the first voyage around Australia in the ‘Investigator’.
1804 - Castle Hill Rising by Irish convicts in New South Wales.
1813 - Barrier of the Blue Mountains Crossed.
1825 - Tasmania seceded from New South Wales.
1829 - Western Australia formed.
1836 - South Australia formed.
1840 - 1968 Convict transportation ended.
1851 - 1961
Gold rushes (Ballarat, Bendigo).
1851 - Victoria seceded from New South Wales.
1855 - Victoria achieved government.
1856 - New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania achieved government.
1859 - Queensland formed from New South Wales and achieved government.
1890 - Western Australia achieved government.
1891 - Depression gave rise to the Australian Labor Party.
1899 - 1900
South African War - forces offered by the individual colonies.

20th CENTURY
1901 - Creation of the Commonwealth of Australia. This was a federation of the States of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.
1911 - Site for capital at Canberra acquired.
1914 - 1918 - World War I - Anzac troops in Europe including Gallipoli. Australia experiences her first major losses in a war during in 1915 on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.
1939 - 1945 - World War II - Anzac troops in Greece, Crete, and N Africa (El Alamein) and the Pacific. The Japanese bomb Darwin in 1942.
1941 - Curtin’s appeal to USA for help in the World War marked the end of the special relationship with Britain.
1944 - Liberal party founded by Menzies.
1948 - 1975 - Two million new immigrants, the majority from continental Europe
1950 - 1953 - Korean War - Australian troops part of the United Nations forces.
1964 - 1972 - Vietnam War - Comonwealth troops in alliance with US forces.
1966 - 1974 - Mineral boom typified by the Posiedon nickel mine.
1967 - The ASEAN was established
1973 - Britain entered the Common Market, and in the 1970’s Japan became Australia’s chief trading partner.
1974 - Whitlam abolishes ‘white Australia’ policy.
1975 - Constitutional crisis; Prime Minister Whitlam dismissed by the governor general.
1975 - United Nations trust territory of Papua New Guinea became independent.
1975 - The Liberal Party under Malcolm Fraser comes to power.
1978 - Northern Territory achieved self-government.
1979 - Opening of uranium mines in Northern Territory.
1983 - Hawke convened first national economic summit - The Fraser Government is defeated in the election and the Australian Labour Party under Bob Hawke forms a government.
1988 - Australia celebrates its Bicentennial - 200 years since the first European settlement.
1991 - Paul Keating replaced Hawke as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister.
1994 - The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was established
1996 - Labour Party ousted in general election by Liberal-National coalition.

1901 - 1999
Australian Prime Ministers of the 20th Century

21st CENTURY
2000 - Australia hosts the 2000 Olympic Games.
2001 - Australia celebrates the Centenary of the Federation of Australia.

Populate or perish
After World War II: Australia sees a huge influx of ‘new Australians’. The world was in resurgence as the ‘Marshall Plan’ kicked in. As a follow up to the war time Senate bill known as ‘Lend Lease’, the USA set about re-building Europe and establishing itself as a world power. During this time, Australian exports multiplied and the nation experienced almost zero unemployment. The Australian-made Holden FX motor car reflected the strength of a growing manufacturing industry. Additionally, there were major building projects such as the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme - a huge project which killed 121 men on construction and many more on the roads. The workforce was drawn from a massive influx of overseas immigrants. The scheme was a success with the world’s largest rice fields receiving irrigation as the flow of the Snowy River was reversed. Unfortunately, there has been a large environmental cost and there has been a growing movement to rejuvenate the Snowy River.
The Cold War gave rise to McCarthyism in the USA and Australia was sucked into the ‘better dead than red’ catch cry. During this time, Labour PM, Ben Chifley attempted to nationalise the banks but was defeated narrowly at the next election by the newly formed Liberal party led by Robert Menzies who campaigned against communism.
In the 50 & 60s: Australia supported the USA and went to war in Korea, hosted the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne in the same year as the introduction of television and went to war again in Vietnam in the swinging 60s. The xenophobic ‘White Australia Policy’ which was designed to keep Asians out was in full swing. However, the Australian community as a whole was coming to terms with it’s place in the world.
In 1967, 66 years AFTER Federation, aborigines gained the right to vote following a referendum. The aboriginal population had declined from 300,000 in 1788 to less than 60,000. The reasons for this are wide and varied. There was Disease, deprivation, killing and the ‘assimilation’ policy of the 20th century which stole indigenous children from their families in an effort to ‘civilise’ them. This has been a shameful part of Australian history.
In 1969, Man walks on the Moon and Australia’s Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes Observatory play an important part.