The First Australians
Eons ago: Australia broke away from the massive Gwandanaland forming the world's first continent in the southern hemisphere. This super continent, Sahul included New Guinea, Tasmania and the Australian mainland until they separated about 8,000 years ago. Australia is the oldest and flattest land on Earth. It is sometimes referred to as 'Gwandana'.
Australia has no native primate species, so humans must be immigrants. Australia is perhaps the oldest of the now existing continents, with land that has been above water for 1.6 billion years. During the most recent peak of glaciation, 18,000 years ago, the ocean was about 130 meters (425 feet) lower and a vast, wide plain connected Australia and New Guinea. The shores of Australia and Timor were only 100 kilometers apart. Due to deep ocean trenches the New Guinea and Australia land mass has been separate from Asia far longer than humans have inhabited the earth. Glaciation cycle peaks would have facilitated human migrations across the narrower straits.
(Did Homo sapiens sail to Australia 176,000 years ago? Stone artifacts from recent archaeological excavations indicate that Australia may have been populated as early as 176,000 years ago, more than triple previous estimates. Ochre samples from the dig, infer that the horizon of the earliest known human art extends to 116,000 years ago. Petroglyphs on monoliths and surrounding boulders are dated at 75,000 years old. Australian scientists Richard Fullager, Donald Price and Lesley Head report their startling findings in a past issue of Antiquity magazine, December, 1998). At Jinmium monolith in the Northern Territory, near the border with the state of Western Australia and the town of Kununurra. On one small patch of rock wall, the scientists counted 3,500 of the circles. On another rock face, a few feet away, 3,200 more circles were carved. The archaeologists calculated that each of the circles would take at least an hour to complete. According to Paul Tacon, an archaeologist at the Australian Museum, this was "a completely new form of art and I am 100% sure that there's no possible way these marks are not human in origin. (from the Sydney Morning Herald, September 21, 1996.)
90,000 - 70,000 BC: (170,000+?) The first arrival of people. It is not certain when people actually occupied the land mass. Pleistocene sites have been discovered which are far greater than 75,000 years old. The presumed state of technologies and the known sea levels suggest that modern human beings and not Homo Erectus settled on the super continent some 80,000+ years ago. Discoveries were made in 1973 at the Malakununja II dig site (Arnhem Land, Australia's top end) which show evidence of human occupation dating back 80,000+ years. Australia also has an abundance of 'rock art' some of which is the oldest known engravings in the world, pre-dating the cave etchings of Europe. Regardless of the debate, The first settlers must be one of the oldest civilisations in the world keeping in mind that the first human migrations (from Africa?) began approx. 100,000 years ago.
'Aborigines'-('from the beginning' derived from Latin) were widely regarded to be the world's first sea farers. The arrival of the Dingo (native dog) about 3,500 years ago saw the extinction of many slow moving, large marsupials. The Dingoes being used as hunting dogs by many Aborigines whose main hunting tools were the woomera, spear and boomerang.
Middle Age cartographers Macrobius in the tenth century, Cecco d'Ascoli in the thirteenth century, and Marco Polo in the fourteenth displayed their belief in a great southern continent. Marco Polo depicted two great islands south-east of Java and wrote that they were seven hundred miles distant. Marco Polo's information is viewed as evidence of Chinese knowledge of the southern continent.
A claim has been made by a Chinese scholar that Confucius cited calculations based on Chinese astronomical observations made in Australia during 592 B.C. and 553 B.C. A more easily accepted claim for Chinese landings in Australia dates to the early fifteenth century, when the Ming dynasty's huge fleet explored Timor and sailed as far as the Coast of Africa. In 1897 a soapstone statuette of Chinese origin was unearthed between the roots of a banyan tree one and a quarter meters underground near Darwin, on the northwest coast. Although Islamic and Arabian traders were established in the Indies prior to European discovery, no record of their visiting Australia has surfaced. Writing around 1515, Chronicler Tom Pires acknowledged learning details of the eastern seas from the charts of Moors, "which I have seen many times."
By the time of European contact, they had developed trade and cultural links with Asia and had formed into different communities, spreading across the whole continent into distinct and separate peoples. Each group had its own territory, traditions, beliefs and language. A unifying cultural foundation developed based on ancient beliefs. These beliefs are sometimes referred to as the Dreamtime.
Portuguese sailors may have sailed along the coastline of Australia as far back as 1542. Some maps have been found which show parts of what appears to be the Australian coastline. But there is no definite proof that they did.
Although no records of Portuguese discovery of Australia are known, the cartographic evidence of the early fifteenth century is not inconsistent with history. After 1517 Spain and Portugal began to dispute possession of the East Indies. On July 4, 1493 Pope Alexander VI decreed that all discoveries 180 degrees east of the Azores should belong to Portugal and those for 180 degrees to the west to Spain. The Catholic majesties agreed to fix the line of demarcation at the mouth of the River of the Amazones. European explorers were incapable of accurate determination of longitude until after developing precise chronometers. Thus the location of a meridian 180 degrees from the South American demarcation in the highly profitable spice islands became a point of contention.
The first substantiated discovery of Australia was in 1606 by Dutch captain Willem Jansz. His journey exploring the east and south coasts of New Guinea followed the western shores of the islands between Australia and New Guinea and then part of Northern Australia. Within the year Spaniard Luis Vaes de Torres sailed through the strait that bears his name and reported very large islands at eleven degrees south, probably Prince of Wales Island and Cape York Peninsula. Neither explorer knew he had discovered a separate continent. The Dutch continued to chart parts of the coast in successive voyages.
In 1616 a Dutch trading ship, the Eendracht, on its way to the Indies (now called Indonesia) bumped into west coast of of Australia. Captain Dirk Hartog landed at Shark Bay, looked around a bit but didn't find anything interesting. He nailed a pewter dish to a tree to record his visit. He did not realize that he had stumbled upon Australia.
Dutch sailors continued to sight the coastline on their trips and called this land New Holland but didn't bother to visit it.
First recorded contact with the 'locals' is attributed to Dutch explorer Jan Carstensz on April 12, 1623. Upon landing the Dutch clashed with Aborigines. Carstensz termed the Cape York natives "the most wretched and poorest creatures I have ever seen." Later on the same voyage, in New Guinea, natives killed Carstensz and eight sailors. Dutch East India Company records note that the expedition found islands and nations "of very little use" to the Company.
In 1642 a Dutchman named Abel Tasman sighted an island he called Van Diemen's Land. This island was later renamed Tasmania in honour of Abel Tasman. He did not realise that this island was a part of Australia. He also went on to explore New Zealand.
18th Century
The English prisons were packed. The prisoners couldn't fit in their jails
and the Americans refused to take them. Luck for the invaders came in the
1770s when Captain Cook was
apparently
the first to discover Australia. Soon after the British took the convicts
to The Great South Land (Australia).
The American War of Independence left the British without a place to off-load convicts. Before the war about a thousand criminals were exported to the colonies each year. Two hundred offenses were punishable by death and many sentences were reprieved on condition of being transported abroad. During the war prisons and ships on the Thames became overfilled. In 1778 the King announced a plan for transporting convicts to 'New South Wales'.
On August 26, 1768, Captain James Cook set sail from Plymouth, England on an overt scientific mission to observe the transit of Venus from the Pacific. His secret instructions from the British Admiralty, to sail at a latitude of 40 degrees south in search of a land of great extent, may have been due to Jean Rotz's 1542 map. After six months exploring New Zealand he sailed westward again and sighted "New South Wales" on April 19, 1770. Cook returned to England in July of 1771 after charting the coast for eight thousand kilometers and substantiating the separation of New Guinea and Australia .
On January 26, 1788, Captian Arthur Phillip 736 convicts and 294 others landed at Sydney Cove, New South Wales with optimism about their colony. In six months only one sheep survived of more than sixty head of livestock. Forty convicts had died on the voyage, another sixty-eight perished in the first half year, with many more sick from scurvy. The first supply ship to sail, two and one-half years later, wrecked on the coast of South Africa. The second fleet brought another thousand convicts, while 267 had perished en route. Half were landed sick and helpless.
More than 100 tribal groups speaking well over 100 languages occupied the Australian continent. Guesses of the Aboriginal population at the time of British settlement range from 150,000 to 300,000. Captain Arthur Phillip, first Governor of New South Wales, estimated the population of Aborigines around present day Sydney to number about 1,500. On April 22, 1788 he wrote of the probable 2,000 rock engraving sites on the local sandstone outcroppings, in the neighborhood of Botany Bay and Port Jackson, "the figures of animals, of shields, and weapons, and even of men, have been seen carved upon the rocks, roughly indeed, but sufficiently well to ascertain very fully what was the object intended. Fish were often represented, and in one place the form of a large lizard was sketched out with tolerable accuracy. On the top of one of the hills, the figure of a man in the attitude they usually assumed by them when they begin to dance, was executed in a still superior style."
In 1791 William Pitt, in the House of Commons, said it was a necessary and essential point of police to send the most incorrigible criminals out of the kingdom. No cheaper mode of disposing of convicts could be found. Transporting the most pitiable was seen as a way of further relieving the burden in the mother country. In 1791 another 198 died during a voyage that delivered 1,864 convicts. Governor Phillip, soon after arrival, had asked for non-convict settlers with knowledge of farming, but by 1800 only some twenty had arrived.
During the late 1700's and the 1800's, the States of Australia were separate colonies of Great Britain. During this time, the states were established. New South Wales in 1778, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1825, Western Australia in 1829, South Australia in 1836, and Queensland, a large part of NSW, in 1859. The capital cities were decided and a government for each state was established.
1788-1824 : Nationalism increases with the concept of 'Currency Lads & Lasses' - children born in Australia.
The
name 'Australia' was adopted in 1814.
It is a portion of an earlier longer name "Terra Australis de la Spiritus
Sanctus"-"The Great South Land of the Holy Spirit". The
explorer Mathew Flinders has been credited with the present name. On 18 July
1814, the day before Matthew Flinders died, his monumental work, A Voyage
To Terra Australis, was published in London in two quarto volumes with a folio
atlas. It placed before the public his lifetime’s work of charting the
coasts of Australia and included the great map of the continent on which for
the first time the word “Australia” was provocatively inscribed.
1825
: New South Wales colony was still largely made up of convicts but a census
in 1828 showed that for the first time, free settlers out numbered convicts.
The total white population in 1828 was 36,598 (mainly in Sydney) of whom 15,
728 were convicts.
25,248 Protestants, 11,236 Catholics, 95 Jews, 19 'Pagans'.
In the years which followed settlement, European explorers penetrated the unknown areas of the continent.
1828-1835
: The black line is instigated in Tasmania (formerly known as Van Diemens
Land until 1823) in 1830.
The black line was confirmation that the war between the blacks and the whites
was in full swing when one-sixth of Tasmania's population marched in one line
across the island colony in an attempt to round up and imprison the entire
black population (estimated 4,000 in 1803 but was less than 600 by 1828).
The campaign took 7 weeks, involved 5,000 men and ended up costing £30,000.
The operation ordered by Lt Gov Arthur netted just one boy and one man. This
event followed Arthur's declaration of martial law in 1828 that allowed whites
to 'shoot on sight' any Aborigine who ventured onto settled land. Vigilante
groups sprang up overnight and this led to the wholesale slaughter of the
native people. The Aborigines had for some time been staging a 'guerilla'
campaign against the invaders and for a while they were successful but they
were never going to be a match for firearms. Arthur viewed the black line
as being 'the final solution'. Despite it's failure, the indigenous people
of Tasmania were ultimately dispossessed of their land with the final group
being captured on Dec 28, 1834 by a hunting party led by George Robinson (later
'Chief Protector' of Aborigines) and assisted by Truganini who in 1832 saved
Robinson from certain death at Port Davey in an attempt to bring about an
end to the war. She led the party to the remote location in western Tasmania.
They were all transported to Flinders Island. Tasmania was now swept of it's
original inhabitants. In 1835, the total population of Tasmanian Aborigines
was believed to be 150 which equates to the genocide of about 4000 people
in less than 30 years.
(Around 1840 elderly Timorese recounted their belief to Australian colonist George Windsor Earl that Melville Island had been a source of slaves for the Portuguese. Three brass cannons, of possible fifteenth century Spanish or Portuguese origin, have been discovered on the Kimberley coast. Perhaps future archaeological finds will shed more light on early Portuguese and Spanish exploration down under.)
Truganini
1841: Truganini + 4 others escape from George Robinson's 'protection' at the Port Phillip Aboriginal Establishment. They were re-captured in 1842 and the 2 male escapees were publicly hanged in Melbourne after being found guilty of the murder of 2 European whalers. At the trial it was pointed out that all 5 had received a considerable amount of religious instruction. The women were acquitted and the men were sentenced to death.
1855-BHP open silver and lead smelting works in Broken Hill, NSW.
1858: 'The Aboriginal Protection Act' allows for Aboriginal children to be removed from their mothers. The Victorian Government established a select committee to inquire into the living conditions of Aboriginal people in Victoria. The subsequent report accepted that Aboriginal communities had witnessed 'their hunting grounds and means of living taken from them' as an outcome of the British occupation of Aboriginal land. Rather than accept responsibility for this injustice the government blamed Aboriginal people themselves for this outcome:
'...had they
been a strong race, like the New Zealanders, they would have forced the new
occupiers of their country to provide for them; but being weak and ignorant,
even for savages, they have been treated with almost utter neglect'.
The report recommended that a system of reserves be established in remote areas of the colony, both to 'protect' Aboriginal people from further injustices and to ensure that Aboriginal people be contained in order to restrict their freedom and place greater controls over their lives.
As a result of the 1858 report the Board for the Protection of Aborigines (BPA) was established in 1860 to administer the government reserves and missions which increasingly controlled the lives of Aboriginal people. On the reserves a system of Christian education and labour was enforced whereas the traditions of Aboriginal society, including ceremonial practices, were banned.
Additionally, any Aboriginal person who continued to live on their own land was subject to the authority of government appointed local guardians, such as police, clergymen or European landholders.
The story of Burke & Wills is a perfect example of adventure, tragedy, bravery and foolhardiness. In 1861, this event captivated the attention of the colonies and still carries through today as a gripping tale.
1869:
BPA becomes responsible for the administration of the Aborigines
Protection Act, which in part sought to separate Aboriginal
children from their families and communities in order to 'educate' them within
a European system. At reserves such as Coranderrk at Healesville, east of
Melbourne, separate living quarters were built for children, with an attached
schoolroom. Supported by the 1869 Act, by 1875 the BPA proposed that all Aboriginal
children be removed from what it termed 'wandering blacks' who had continued
to live an autonomous life, outside the control of the reserves:
"It is not practical, nor perhaps would it be humane, to compel the old natives against their inclinations to abandon the localities where they were born. . . but the children are being removed one by one and sent to the stations, where they are cared for and taught in the schools."
1876:
Truganini dies. Trugernanner / Lalla Rookh / Truganini dies aged 64.
"The last known Tasmanian Aborigine is believed to be Truganini, once
a proud 'chief's' daughter and a wise woman who tried in vain to bring an
end to the bloodshed. The extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines, caused
by white man's diseases, erosion of their society, eviction from hunting grounds,
the abduction of women and the systematic murder, is now total"
From the Bruny Island tribe, she is thought to be the last full-blood
Tasmanian Aborigine. Described as being a heroic Tasmanian Aboriginal woman,
Truganini in her final days was fearful of her fate after death saying: "I
know that when I die the museum wants my body".
PLEASE NOTE : In 1976, 100 years after her death, Truganini's skeleton was finally cremated and her ashes scattered putting her spirit finally to rest.
In 1880, the population of Australia shot past the 2 million mark. The first real effort to unite the colonies was the creation of the Federation Council in 1885, in Sydney. However, New South Wales never joined and South Australia was in it from 1888 to 1890. In 1890, a preliminary conference, organised by Henry Parkes, took place in Melbourne. All the Premiers attended the conference. The delegate agreed that a federal government, with the power to make national laws, is established.
Apart from explorers, Australia had it's Bushrangers (outlaws). Many were simple thugs but a few were held aloft in the minds of the common people who were tired of the unjust actions of the establishment.. The most famous of these was the armour cladded Ned Kelly (Ireland) who still stirs the Australian imagination more than 120 years after the Bushranger's controversial execution. Ned Kelly's "Jerilderie Letter" is considered an important historical document.
In June 1880 Ned made his last stand.
Click on Ned to read the letter
The Half-Caste Act
The Aborigines Act of 1886 is often referred to as the 'half-caste' Act, as it was through this legislation that the colonial government of Victoria, through the control of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines, attempted to break up Aboriginal families and communities on the reserves. Under the 1886 Act the government had the power to remove any Aboriginal person from a reserve who was under the age of 34 and was categorised as less than 'full blood'.
The effect of this legislation had an immediate impact on Aboriginal people. For instance, the legislation was posted at police stations throughout Victoria, and police were regularly requested to remove so-called 'half-castes' from reserves. Aboriginal people affected by the act found that they could no longer receive any assistance from the reserves, and any Aboriginal person who continued to live on a reserve who was found to be supporting expelled community members with food were 'threatened with having their own rations stopped'.
1891 : A national convention, led by Henry Parkes, proposed that the state governments unite. Edmund Barton began a federation campaign in 1893. In 1897 and 1898, a constitutional convention wrote a constitution. It was approved by the people and the British Parliament.
1901 : Edmund Barton was appointed Prime Minister. For a flag, the British Union Jack was placed in one quarter. Below it was a 7-pointed star representing the states of Australia. On its right, The Southern Cross was placed.
Throughout our history, many Australians have often referred to Britain as being 'the mother country', 'the old country' or 'home'. National identity changed this and by the 1970s, many Australians were lobbying for a new direction. In 1999, Australia held a referendum to decide if Australia should become a Republic. Unfortunately, the issue was tainted by political maneuvers which saw the question being defeated on technical grounds. Australians rejected the Republican model which gave the power of Presidential election to the Parliament of the day. Liberal PM John Howard has often expressed that he is a monarchist and that he is opposed to Australia becoming a Republic. A number of barriers were put in place and the issues became complicated. In a campaign which was often emotional, Australians ultimately rejected the proposal by 54% - 46% and Australia remains a constitutional monarchy with the British monarch as it's head of state. Many Australians are demanding a better model which provides the President to be elected by the people. It is likely that Australians will vote again before 2010.
