Australia has probably been populated for longer than Western Europe – possibly even twice as long. Humans first arrived from Asia at least 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, and some argue that it was far earlier. Professor Paul Tacon, an archaeologist at Griffith University, Queensland, claims that pollen core samples taken across Australia show changes in vegetation and deposition of charcoal ‘beginning somewhere about 120,000 years ago’. He believes that these changes resulted from human activity.
The first migrations to Australia were most likely spurred by a period of glacial advance that encouraged the cave dwellers of the Northern Hemisphere to head for the sunbelt. This move set off a chain reaction, forcing more southerly folk out of their way. As ice caps accumulated, sea levels dropped drastically, meaning there were more land bridges, but it’s thought the first people came via boat.
The first Australians had little difficulty adapting to the new environment. As Stone Age hunter-gatherers, they were accustomed to foraging, and the takings in the new continent were good: plenty of fish, berries, roots and marsupials to eat.
Traditional Aboriginal art depicts the Dreamtime
Jon Davison/Apa Publications
‘The Dreamtime’ is the all-purpose name for everything that came before. It puts Aboriginal history, traditions and culture under a single mythological roof. The Dreamtime’s version of Genesis recounts how ancestral heroes created the stars, the earth and all the creatures. The Dreamtime explains why the animals and plants are the way they are, and how humans can live in harmony with nature.
Aboriginal paintings, Kakadu National Park
Glyn Genin/Apa Publications
Navigators Arrive
For millennia the Aborigines had Australia to themselves, but over the last few hundred years, the rest of the world has closed in. Like the search for El Dorado, everybody seemed to be looking for Terra Australis Incognita, the ‘Unknown Land of the South’. Throughout the 16th century, explorers from Europe kept their eyes peeled for the legendary continent and its presumed riches. Some (including the Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese) may have come close, but the first known landing was by a Dutch captain, Willem Jansz, in 1606. It was an anticlimax. ‘There was no good to be done there,’ was Jansz’s conclusion as he weighed anchor.
The merchant adventurers of the Dutch East India Company were not to be discouraged, however. In 1642 the company dispatched one of its ace seafarers, Abel Tasman, to track down the elusive treasures of the farthest continent. On his first expedition, Tasman discovered an island that he called Van Diemen’s Land – now known as Tasmania, after him. A couple of years later he was sent back. He covered much of the coast of northern Australia, but still found no gold, silver or spices. Like Jansz before him, Tasman had nothing good to say about the indigenous people, who impressed him as poor, hungry and unattractive brutes. The Dutch named Australia ‘New Holland’, but their reports on the land were so unpromising that they never bothered to claim it.
Another pessimistic view was reported by a colourful traveller, English buccaneer William Dampier, who had two good looks at the west coast of Australia towards the end of the 17th century. He found no drinking water, no fruit or vegetables and no riches. The local inhabitants, he wrote, were ‘the miserablest people in the world’.
‘Beautiful lies’
According to the author Mark Twain, the history of Australia ‘does not read like history but like the most beautiful lies... It is full of surprises, and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true; they all happened.’
A replica of Cook’s Endeavour in Sydney’s Darling Harbour
iStock
Botany Bay
Almost by accident, James Cook, the great British navigator, landed on the east coast of Australia in 1770 on a very roundabout trip back to England from Tahiti. Aboard his ship Endeavour were the skilled naturalists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander. They found so many fascinating specimens that Cook was moved to name his landing place Botany Bay.
Captain James Cook, as portrayed by Nathaniel Dance
Public domain
Cook claimed all the territory he charted for George III, coining the name New South Wales. He returned to London with glowing reports of a vast, sunny, fertile land, inhabited by a native people who were ‘far more happier than we Europeans’.
In 1779, Joseph Banks, by now president of the Royal Society, came up with a novel idea. He proposed colonising Australia, but instead of conventional settlers, he would send out convicts as pioneers. This plan, he contended, would solve the crisis in Britain’s overflowing jails.
For most of the 18th century, the British had disposed of troublesome convicts by banishing them to North America. With the American Revolution, though, this destination was no longer an option. The motherland’s prisons could not cope, and the river hulks that were used as floating jails threatened to overflow with riots and disease.
In May 1787 the British government began the transportation of criminals to Australia. The programme was to endure for 80 years. In that time more than 160,000 convicts were shipped to a new life Down Under.
The First Fleet
A retired naval officer, Captain Arthur Phillip, was put in command of the first fleet of 11 sailing vessels carrying nearly 1,500 people – more than half of them convicts – on an eight-month voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales. Against the odds, the convoy was a success.
Captain Phillip (now with the title Governor) came ashore in full ceremonial dress but unarmed. Spear-toting Aborigines milled about like an unwelcoming committee. A lieutenant on the flagship wrote: ‘I think it is very easy to conceive the ridiculous figure we must appear to these poor creatures, who were perfectly naked.’
As the truth about Botany Bay was unveiled, Cook’s rosy claims faded to bleak. The expedition’s officers were appalled to discover that there was no shelter from east winds, that much of the alleged meadowland was actually swamp and that there was not enough fresh water to go around.
Luckily, the next best thing to paradise was waiting just around the corner. Governor Phillip and a reconnaissance party sailed 20km (12 miles) up the coast and discovered what Fleet Surgeon John White called ‘the finest and most extensive harbour in the universe’, big enough to provide ‘safe anchorage for all the navies of Europe’. It was also strikingly beautiful. Today it is decorated with an opera house and a bridge and is called Sydney Harbour. The fleet reassembled at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 (the date is marked every year as the Australian national holiday), and the British flag was raised over the colony.
London’s great expectations took for granted that New South Wales would be instantly self-sufficient. Real life fell dangerously short of the theory. The Sydney summer was too hot for exertion, and even if the convicts had genuinely wanted to pitch in, the soil was unpromising. In any event, most of the outcasts were city-bred and didn’t know the difference between a hoe and a sickle. Livestock died or disappeared in the bush.
Shipwrecks and delays in London meant that relief supplies were delayed for nearly two years, causing increasing desperation. As food dwindled, rations were cut. Prisoners caught stealing food were flogged. Finally, to set an example, the Governor ordered a food looter to be hanged.
In June 1790, to all-round jubilation, the supply ship Lady Juliana reached Sydney harbour and the long fast ended. As agriculture finally began to blossom, many thousands of new prisoners were shipped out. And even voluntary settlers chose Australia as the land of their future.
Enter Captain Bligh
When Governor Phillip retired, the colony’s top army officer, Major Francis Grose, took over. His army subordinates fared very well under the new regime, which encouraged free enterprise. The officers soon found profitable sidelines, usually at the expense of the British taxpayers. The army’s monopoly on the sale of rum made quick fortunes; under some tipsy economic law, rum began to replace money as Australia’s medium of exchange. Even prisoners were paid in alcohol for their extracurricular jobs.
As news of widespread hanky-panky reached London, the government responded by sending out a well-known disciplinarian to shake up the rum-sodden militia. He was Captain William Bligh, victim of the notorious mutiny on HMS Bounty seven years earlier. Bligh meant to put fear into the hearts of backsliding officers, but his explosive temper was beyond control. His New South Wales victims nicknamed the new governor Caligula and plotted treason.
Brave but Fallible
Captain William Bligh never won any popularity contests, but historians believe that he was not as bad as is sometimes thought. Before his career in Australia, he had a distinguished record: he had circumnavigated the globe with James Cook, fought under Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen, and shown evidence of a superhuman survival instinct when the Bounty mutineers abandoned him in the Pacific. Thanks to his courage, his skill as a navigator, and good fortune, he survived a voyage of 5,823km (3,618 miles) in a lifeboat. By coincidence he had also been involved in another serious naval mutiny, in 1797, before being appointed Governor of New South Wales to re-establish discipline. This captain, immortalised by Hollywood, eventually reached the rank of Rear Admiral.
Bligh was deposed by a group of insurgent officers on 26 January 1808, as the colony toasted its 20th anniversary. The Rum Rebellion, as the mutiny was dubbed, led to a radical reorganisation and reshuffle in personnel. But the inevitable court-martial seemed to take into account how Bligh’s personality and methods had galled his subordinates. The mutineers were finally punished by more than a rap on the knuckles, but less than they might have expected.
Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney, designed by Francis Greenway
123RF
Opening a Continent
New South Wales, under Governor Lachlan Macquarie (served 1809–21), overcame the stigma of a penal colony and became a land of opportunity. The idealistic army officer organised the building of schools, a hospital and a courthouse, and roads to link them. As a method of inspiration for exiles to ‘go straight’ and win emancipation, Macquarie appointed an ex-convict as Justice of the Peace. Then he invited some of the others to dinner, much to the horror of the local elite. One of the criminals Macquarie pardoned, Francis Greenway, became the colony’s prolific official architect.
Some of the ex-convicts fared so well under Macquarie’s progressive policies that he was accused of pampering the criminal class. The authorities in London ordered tougher punishment, and the total separation of prisoners from the rest of the population. All this led to long-lasting conflict between reformed criminals and their children on one side and a privileged class of immigrants on the other. Nowadays, the shoe is firmly on the other foot: descendants of First Fleet convicts often express the same kind of pride as Americans of Mayflower ancestry.
The biggest problem for Governor Macquarie and his immediate successors was the colony’s position on the edge of the sea. There was not enough land to provide food for the expanding population. The Blue Mountains, which boxed in Sydney Cove, seemed a hopeless barrier. Every attempt to break through the labyrinth of steep valleys failed. Then, in 1813, explorers Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson had the unconventional idea of crossing the peaks rather than the valleys. It worked. Beyond the Blue Mountains they discovered a land of plenty – endless plains that would support a great new society.
Other adventurers opened new territories. Land was either confiscated or bought from indigenous tribesmen: for 400 sq km (150 sq miles) of what is now Melbourne, the entrepreneurs gave the Aborigines a wagonload of clothing and blankets, together with 30 knives, 12 tomahawks, 10 mirrors, 12 pairs of scissors and 23kg (50lb) of flour. By the middle of the 19th century, thousands of settlers had poured into Australia and all of the present state capitals were on the map.
The Prospector dreams of riches in an 1889 painting
Jon Davison/Apa Publications
Age of Gold
In his understandable enthusiasm, prospector Edward Hargraves slightly overstated the case when he declared: ‘This is a memorable day in the history of New South Wales. I shall be a baronet.’ The year was 1851. The place was near Bathurst, approximately 210km (130 miles) west of Sydney. Hargraves’ audience consisted of one speechless colleague. The occasion was the discovery of gold in Australia.
At almost the same time, prospectors from Melbourne struck gold in Ballarat. With two colonies – New South Wales and Victoria – sharing in the boom, adventurers streamed in from Europe and America. By the year 1860, Australia’s population had reached a total of one million. Thirty-three years later the bonanza became a coast-to-coast celebration when gold was discovered in Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
Life in the gold fields was rugged, conditions aggravated by climate, flies and tax collectors. Whether big winners or small losers, all the diggers had to pay the same licence fee. Enforcement and fines were needlessly strict. Justice, the miners felt, was tilted against them. So they burned their licences and demonstrated for voting rights and other reforms. In the subsequent siege of the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat in 1854, troops were ordered to attack the demonstrators. There was heavy loss of life, and the licence fee was abandoned.
Another riot, in 1861, pitted the white prospectors against Chinese miners, who were resented for their foreignness, strong work ethic and frugality. At Lambing Flat, New South Wales, thousands of whites whipped and clubbed a community of Chinese. Police, troops and finally the courts were lenient on the attackers. It was the worst of several race riots.
Rogues on the Range
Transportation of convicts finally ended in 1868, when London had to admit that the threat of exile in Australia was no deterrent to crime. In Australia itself, crime was always a problem; nobody really expected every last sinner to go straight as soon as he arrived. Several wily characters, often escaped convicts, became bushrangers, the local version of highwaymen. They occasionally attracted sympathy from Outback folk because they tended to rob the rich and flout authority. As the crimes grew more ambitious or outrageous, their fame was frozen into legend.
The saga of Ned Kelly (1854–80) reads like Robin Hood gone sour. The Kelly gang preyed on bankers rather than humble farmers, and Kelly’s imaginative operations could be spectacular, but he killed three policemen and still divides a nation’s opinion – some regard him as a hero, others a murderer. Wounded in a shootout while wearing a suit of homemade armour, Kelly was captured alive. Sentenced to death, he cheekily invited the judge to meet him in the hereafter. Two weeks after Kelly was hanged, the judge died.
An Independent Nation
Having received the blessing of Queen Victoria, the colonies of Australia formed a new nation, the Commonwealth of Australia, on New Year’s Day 1901. This federation retained the Queen as head of state, and bowed to the parliament and Privy Council in London.
Canberra’s war memorial
Australian Capital Tourism
Loyalty to the British Empire was tested twice, extravagantly, in the world wars. The Gallipoli campaign in 1915–16 was the first and most memorable single disaster for Australian troops. By the end of World War I, over 200,000 Australians – two-thirds of the expeditionary force – had been killed or wounded.
Australia’s fallen soldiers are remembered on Anzac Day
Jerry Dennis/Apa Publications
Combat came closer to home in World War II, when Japanese planes repeatedly bombed Darwin, enemy submarines penetrated Sydney harbour and sank a ferry (the torpedo had been fired at the American warship USS Chicago), ships were sunk off the Australian coast and a couple of shells hit Sydney’s eastern suburbs. American forces under General MacArthur arrived in Australia in 1942 and a US force supported by Australia defeated the Japanese decisively in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May of that year. The statistics: 27,000 Australian servicemen died in action on the European and Asian fronts, and nearly 8,000 more died as prisoners of Japan.
After the war, Britain aligned itself with Europe and downgraded its ties with the old Empire. As Britain’s regional power declined, Australia boosted its alliance with the US. Australian troops (more than 40,000 of them) fought alongside Americans in Vietnam, sparking vehement anti-war protests in Sydney and other Australian cities. Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt introduced the draft and promised US President Lyndon B. Johnson that Australia would go ‘all the way with LBJ’. Holt disappeared in 1967 while swimming at Cheviot Beach south of Melbourne; it is believed he was caught in the undertow and swept out to sea.
The tilt towards the US and Asia also showed up in Australia’s balance of trade. Prior to World War II, 42 percent of Australia’s overseas trade was with Britain. Today, Australia’s top 10 export markets include Japan, Singapore, China, Korea, Taiwan, India and Thailand. Japan buys almost one fifth of Australia’s total merchandise exports. Among non-Asian markets, the most significant for Australian exporters are the US, New Zealand and Britain.
Greek city?
Thanks to its immigrant population, Melbourne is often called the third greatest Greek city, after Athens and Thessaloniki.
Cultural Changes
Another obvious change in orientation is the racial and national background of Australians. Before World War II, 98 percent of the population was of British or Irish birth or descent. As for immigrants, 81 percent of Australia’s overseas-born population came from the main English-speaking countries (Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the US). Since then, the fortress walls of the infamous ‘White Australia’ immigration policy (enacted in 1901 to maintain racial purity) have been torn down under the slogan ‘Populate or Perish.’ Australia has seen immigration from many countries including Italy, Greece, Malta, the former Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Germany, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Malaysia, Lebanon, Turkey, Hong Kong, China, South Africa, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Since 1945, Australia has accepted 7 million people as new settlers – about 660,000 of whom arrived under humanitarian programmes – creating a culturally diverse nation. Nearly a quarter of Australia’s population is overseas-born. By 2006, only 34 percent of the overseas-born population had been born in English-speaking countries.
Australia has had a less than comfortable relationship with its own indigenous peoples, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Together, they make up just over two percent of the population (about 90 percent of which are Aborigines). Aborigines were not permitted to vote in national elections until 1962, and were not included in the census until 1967. Worse, from the late 19th century until about 1970, governments forcibly removed as many as 100,000 Aboriginal children, mainly of mixed race, from their families. The children – later dubbed the Stolen Generations – were taken to church missions, orphanages and foster homes.
In 1990, a government-appointed commission gave Australia’s indigenous peoples the power to make decisions on social and other matters that affect them. In 1993, there were further moves towards reconciliation, with legislation effectively nullifying the doctrine of terra nullius (‘uninhabited land’), which had deemed Australia to be empty at the time of European settlement and, by default, the property of the Crown. The court ruling recognised that Aborigines may hold common law rights or ‘native title’ to land.
Support continues to grow for a treaty with the Aboriginal people to foster national unity. In 2000, in cities throughout Australia, many thousands of citizens marched to demand that the government formally apologise to the Stolen Generations, to begin a process of reconciliation. In Sydney, 250,000 people marched for the cause. However, no progress on the issue was made until February 2008, when Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd issued an apology.
The Union flag still occupies a quarter of the Australian flag
Dreamstime
Australia entered the 21st century in an upbeat mood. In the late 2000s, its economy weathered the global financial crisis better than most other Western economies, avoiding recession thanks to targeted stimulus spending by the government and a resilient mining boom driven by rising demand for coal and iron ore in China.
Politically, however, all was not well. When Kevin Rudd proposed a carbon pollution reduction scheme and a mineral resources tax on mining companies’ profits, his public popularity dipped and soon after so did his support from parliamentary colleagues. In June 2010, his deputy Julia Gillard replaced him, becoming Australia’s first female prime minister. Following the August 2010 federal election, Julia Gillard formed a minority Labor government with the support of three independent members and the sole member representing the Australian Greens in the House of Representatives.
After three years of constant media speculation about a potential comeback, the political pantomime went full circle and Rudd was reinstated as Labor leader and Australian Prime Minister in June 2013, but the Liberal Party led by Tony Abbott won a decisive victory in the general election in September that year. Abbott rode in on the back of promises that he would roll back the carbon tax and ‘stop the boats’ (meaning refugees). Thus far in 2014 his government has signed off on a proposal that will increase the boats (in the shape of large tankers) that can sail across the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, with the expansion of deepwater coal mining activity in the World Heritage area (including some dredging), and indicated that Tasmania’s National Parks (some of which are also World Heritage listed) are ‘open for business’ for the forestry industry – two policies that look likely to set the battlelines for the next fight between big business and environmentalists.