History of Australia
The indigenous people of Australia have a history lost in the mists of time. It is thought that they go back as far as the last great Ice Age. The theory is that the first humans to step foot onto the soil of what became Australia came from Indonesia about seventy thousand years ago. Following them some twenty thousand years behind, came the ancestors of the Aborigine people.
Things started to go wrong for the Aborigines when the first Europeans arrived in the 16th century. Portuguese, Dutch and the English all explored the coastal regions and started to settle. Captain Cook claimed New South Wales for the British calling at Botany Bay in 1770.
The transportation of convicts from England commenced around 1787 due to chronic overcrowding in Britain’s prisons. Captain Arthur Phillips took the first fleet of convict ships to Botany Bay and became the governor of the colony that was created there. His fleet consisted of eleven ships loaded with seven hundred convicts of both sexes. He had some marines for security and enough food supplies to last two years. Botany Bay wasn’t really that suitable so the group moved to Sydney Cove where water was more plentiful and the land more fertile. The years to follow were very hard going indeed with disease and hunger a constant companion. It took sixteen years for the colony to become firmly established.
After the discovery of gold in the 1850’s immigration figures shot up with people from all over Europe and beyond arriving in Australia. The Aborigines started to lose their lands as the new immigrants’ commenced farming and mining operations. The gold exports and the industrial revolution going flat out in England fuelled the economy of the colony.
Australia became a recognised country on the 1st January 1901 when all the colonies joined together in a federation. The links with Great Britain proved unbreakable and many Australians fought and died alongside British troops in various conflicts. During World War II the Australians were afforded the protection of the United States from a likely Japanese invasion. As result of that alliance Australian troops were engaged in the United States wars in Vietnam and Korea.
After the Second World War immigration figures to Australia rocketed upwards. The cosmopolitan nature of Australia’s cities started to form during this post war period. The economy was healthy with a good base of exported mineral wealth.
The Aborigines were to some extent rightfully recognised in the Native Titles Act of 1993. The government and the other people in Australia were forced to admit that they had been treated disgracefully since the first European settlers arrived. Many Aborigines are still very poor and live in bad conditions but things are improving, if slowly.