A History of Australia

Australia - bizarre when you think that until the early seventeenth century, the world knew nothing of this vast country. It simply slumbered away at the bottom of the world, staying out of the world’s great and terrible endeavours. Indeed, its inhabitants were unaware of anybody’s existence except their own and as it turned out they were much better off in their isolation and their ignorance. They were an ancient people, at least forty thousand years old, estimates reckon that there were between three hundred thousand to one million people scattered in around two hundred and fifty tribes many of which co-existed in peaceful alliance with one another. Amazingly, each had their own distinct language, meaning that there were over two hundred and fifty distinct languages! Alas, the vast, vast majority of these tongues have vanished off the face of the world, without a trace remaining. These people had originally made their way onto Australia by means of a land bridge which was connected to New Guinea. Similarly, some made their way onto the present day island of Tasmania which was also connected to the land mass during the last ice age. The seas later rose, cutting off the land bridge and isolating Tasmania’s inhabitants from the mainland. The collective name for these tribes was Aborigine, because of the harsh environment that they lived in they were rarely able to cultivate the land nor were they able to herd animals. Instead, they lived by hunting and gathering food, both of which were arduous and difficult tasks, often taking up most of the tribe’s day.

Aboriginal women armed with digging sticks and dilly bags dug for yams and edible roots and collected fruits, berries, seeds, vegetables and insects. They also used their digging sticks to kill small lizards and other small creatures. The men from the tribe did the hunting, tracking and killing larger animals such as kangaroos and emus with throwing clubs, boomerangs and stones. They also built traps, laid snares and dug pits to capture animals with. The first definite sighting of Australia by European explorers was in 1606 when a Dutch expedition, captained by Willem Janszoon, made landfall on Cape York, believing it to be part of New Guniea. It was the first contact between Europeans and the ancient Aboriginal peoples, it didn’t go well however, with the latter attacking the former and the latter hot tailing it out of there rapidly. Not the most ideal of beginnings but completely understandable, the Aborigines had lived in complete isolation, believing themselves alone on the planet, then seventeenth century ship arrives loaded with white skinned men, wearing strange garments and speaking gobbledygook. It would be akin to a spaceship landing in Times Square with Martians alighting from it. Contact however had been made and life was no longer going to be the same for the hitherto isolated Aboriginal tribes, Dutch ships began making tentative explorations of the north Australian coast over the following decades. In 1642, Abel Tasman discovered Tasmania and New Zealand. Over the subsequent decades Dutch explorers such as Francois Tyssen and Willem de Vlamingh mapped much of the Australian coast.

 Captain James Cook is often incorrectly credited with the discovery of Australia but he did not sight it until 1770, almost two hundred years after Janszoon but he still claimed the east coast for Britain naming it New South Wales. Following the loss of their American colonies after the American War of Independence, Britain required somewhere to put their glut of convicts which their overcrowded prisons could no longer accommodate. Sydney Cove was chosen as a suitable place, when a fleet loaded with convicts landed there on 26 January 1788, a date now celebrated as Australia Day. And so European settlement of Australia began with a bunch of convicts who were guarded by second rate soldiers. One in three of the convicts were Irish, many who were transported because of political and agrarian disturbances which they had become involved in against the British Empire. The early years of the colony were treacherous with all methods of farming failing and the population almost starving. However, by 1790, some farming methods were successful and the colony began to move out of the arena of near famine and started to become self sufficient. As the colony began to prosper, some Europeans were confident enough to begin to explore further into the interior. From 1815, the colony began to grow rapidly as more and more free settlers arrived and new lands were opened up for farming. A proper society was beginning to be formed, and the settlers protested successfully against the further transportation of convicts to Australia, the practice ceasing in the early 1840s with the exception of the Swan River settlement (now Western Australia) where the practice remained until 1868 due to labour shortages.

By 1846 there were four separate colonies - New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, five if you include New Zealand. Each colony was governed by a British Governor which was appointed by the British monarch with most of the administration been controlled by the military. The burgeoning colonies of course clashed with the existing Aboriginal people, now rivals for land and resources. As a result of these clashes, the Aborigines were decimated, been driven of their lands led to mass starvation and European diseases decimated their populations. Tragically by the end of the nineteenth century, their numbers had dwindled massively and those that remained were forced onto land reserves. In 1851, the fortunes of the colonies were to change beyond all recognition with the discovery of gold, firstly in the newly founded colony of Victoria. Huge numbers of settlers left the shores of Ireland and Britain to share in the new found prosperity, they were joined by considerable numbers of immigrants from North America, China and continental Europe. The large number of settlers, now supremely confident, began to call for trial by jury, representative government, a free press and so the rumblings of a breakaway from Britain began. In 1855, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania were all granted parliaments in which the lower houses were fully elected. For the following four decades, Australia boomed, cities sprang up, for example Melbourne grew out of the dust to become the second largest city in the Empire. Times were good, equally working conditions were much better than back in Europe as the unions were very strong. Employers attempted to circumnavigate the unions by bringing in Chinese labour, all colonies immediately placed restrictions on Asian labour leading to the foundation of the White Australian Policy.

The boom time came to an abrupt halt with the Great Crash of 1891 with all the colonies subsequnelty entering a decade long depression. The unions and the parliaments entered into a caustic battle leading the unions to form their own political parties which were the forerunners of the Australian Labor Party. These developments led to a increasing radicalism and nationalism with escalating calls for Australian independence. In addition, there began the rumblings of a racist attitudes towards Asian immigrants. The Depression led the colonies to seek a federation, realising that for the colonies to go it alone was simply too risky, it came into effect on 1 January 1901. Melbourne was nominated as the temporary seat of government while Canberra was constructed as a purpose-designed capital city. The first major struggle that the Federation faced was World War One, sending tens of thousands of young men to fight at Gallipoli and in France. Tragically over sixty thousand men were killed with over one hundred and fifty thousand wounded. During the 1920s, Australia depended massively on the export of wool and wheat, too much so in fact as the subsequent crash and depression of the 1930s which economically destroyed the country was to prove. Australian troops again played an important role in World War Two and it’s borders were breached when Japanese planes bombed Darwin and Japanese submarines shelled Sydney. After World War Two, Australia realised that it needed a larger population to be sustainable and so they embarked on a massive immigration programme, encouraging hundreds of thousands of displaced Europeans to resettle down under. During the 1950s they also began relaxing their White Australia Policy. The Cold War saw Australia developing closer links with America, sending troops to fight both in Korea and Vietnam. Melbourne hosted the Olympics in 1958, beginning what many regarded as a flourishing of Australian culture which lasted throughout the 1960s and 1970s. However, once again in the 1980s the economy collapsed but the government reacted well, introducing wide ranging reforms which stabilised the situation. The 1990s and the early twenty-first century have once again being prosperous for Australia although at the beginning of 2009 evidence started to appear that the country may once again enter recession. During the 1990s, the issue of Australian Republicanism was once again brought to the forefront of the national debate with polls consistently reported that a majority of citizens were in favour of a republic and a complete breakaway form Britain. However, a referendum held in 1999 swung in favour of remaining in the Commonwealth.