The History of Australia

Australia today is one of the wealthiest and most highly developed nations on the planet, boasting enviably high levels of education, healthcare and wages, which when coupled with its easy going and laid-back lifestyle, makes for one of the highest levels of living standards enjoyed anywhere in the world.

The quality of life in Australia is in fact so high that it’s five major metropolitan urban areas; Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, all regularly feature in the top 10 of the Global Liveability Index, which ranks cities based on their levels of stability, healthcare, culture, environment, education and infrastructure.

All of this culminates in Australia having one of the worlds highest levels of life expectancy, with males expecting to live to an average of 81.30 years of age and females to an average of 85.40 years. This marks Australia, alongside neighbouring New Zealand, as clear outliers in terms of life expectancy when compared to the levels of other nations in the southern hemisphere, where in some instances barely exceed the age of 50.

However, Australia hasn’t always enjoyed such high levels of life expectancy, nor any other measures of human development for that matter. Just over 150 years ago, in 1870, a newborn child was only expected to live to the age of 34 on average and just a few decades prior to that, the livelihoods themselves of many Australians consisted of little more than carrying out hard, arduous labour in a harsh and unforgiving environment. That is because for much of Australia’s early history, the country was governed as a penal colony for British convicts, who were transported to the far side of the world to lay the foundations of the first European settlements there. But how did this country change to such a degree, going from a place where people were sent to be punished, into a place where many aspire to live today?

This is the history of Australia.

The continent and country that is Australia has been inhabited for the best part of 65,000 years, with humans first migrating there from Southeast Asia at the end of the last ice age. These early explorers were the first people to call Australia home, eventually spreading out and settling all over the gigantic land mass stretching from the Torres Strait Islands in the north, all the way to Tasmania in the south. These were the ancestors of the modern Aboriginal peoples, who over the subsequent millennia formed the first nations of Australia, comprising over 500 different tribal groups, each with their own set of languages and territories. Life in aboriginal Australia would continue undisturbed in much the same way for countless generations, that was until the occurrence of an event in the early 17^th century that would change the lives of the native peoples of Australia and their descendants forever, the arrival of Europeans.

During the great age of discovery, which lasted from the late 15^th to 17^th centuries, countless numbers of Europeans embarked on ships to explore the unknown corners of the world and develop trade networks to the exotic markets of Asia or the Americas. As the blank spaces on maps of the globe began to be filled in, a hypothetical theory that dated back to the times of antiquity began to resurface amongst the more enlightened members of European society. It proposed that in relation to the composition of the world’s continents in the northern and southern hemispheres, the land masses in each would need to be balanced in order to maintain equilibrium in the world. Thus, there should theoretically be a great continent situated somewhere in the southern hemisphere, which had yet to be discovered.

This southern land, or ‘terra australis’ as it was called in Latin, was eventually sighted by European eyes in the early 1600’s, when a Dutch vessel under the command of William Janszoon made the first documented landfall on the Australian coast, in the year 1606. During this time, the Dutch were one of the pre-eminent pioneering nations that were mapping and exploring the world during the age of discovery and by the first decades of the 17^th century, they had established an extensive maritime trading network that stretched from Europe to South America, Africa, India and the Far East. It was Asia in particular that caught the attention of Dutch merchant explorers, who were looking to cash in on the lucrative spice trade that was centred on the islands that now form part of Indonesia.

They subsequently established a private trading company to finance the exploratory expeditions to these lands, with the Dutch East India Company, as it became known, employing navigators such as William Janszoon to captain and lead the voyages en route to the East Indies. In the following decades, further sightings of the Australian coastline were made and chartered on maps by more Dutch explorers like Dirk Hartog, who landed at Shark Bay in 1616, and Jan Fransz, who charted parts of the southwestern corner of Australia in 1622. Other separate voyages saw the northern and southern coastlines mapped in the late 1620’s but the most notable of these early expeditions was that led by Abel Tasman in 1642, who reached Van Diemen’s Land, later to be renamed Tasmania in honour of his discovery, as well as sighting New Zealand and Fiji.

The Dutch discoveries of this new land promptly led them to name it New Holland on the maps of the time, however, the idea of sending Dutch colonists out to such a remote and seemingly inhospitable territory was never deemed cost effective by the Dutch East India Company, whose primary focus remained on the invaluable spice trade. Consequently, further explorations of Australia by Europeans halted almost entirely for the next 100 years. It was only during the voyages of Captain James Cook to the South Pacific in the 18^th century, that interest in Terra Australis was once again renewed.

In the course of three separate expeditions between 1768 and 1779, Captain Cook carried out the most pioneering exploration of the Pacific Ocean ever yet conducted by a European navigator. This included exploration of not just Australia and New Zealand but also other Pacific islands such as Hawaii, as well as Fiji. It was in April 1770 that he first sighted the eastern shore of Australia and subsequently went ashore with some of his crew from the HMS Endeavour, naming the area Botany Bay on account of the numerous natural specimens collected by the ships botanist, Joseph Banks. After spending one week exploring the surrounding area and attempting to interact with the local Aboriginals, Captain Cook raised anchor and sailed further north, exploring other areas up the coast and claiming the entire area, which they named New South Wales, for Britain.

After arriving back home in 1771, Captain Cook relayed the tales of his discoveries to the government, as well as his judgement on the suitability of the area around Botany Bay for a potential British colonial settlement. Despite undertaking two further journeys to the Pacific over the next decade, Cook would never again return to Australia, for he was killed on the island of Hawaii in 1780 whilst on his third and final voyage.

Captain Cook was however, not the only European navigator exploring the waters around Australia during this time, for in 1772, the French captain and privateer, Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, landed on Tasmania whilst on his way to map the South Seas. Additionally, that same year, fellow Frenchman Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn, formally laid claim to the Western Coast of Australia in the name of France, overriding the Dutch claims to New Holland from the previous century.

Although both Britain and France formally declared the two sides of the continent to be part of their respective empires, any effort to follow up on these claims with colonial settlements failed to materialise on account of their distance from Europe and ambiguity as to how such action would be implemented.

In the end, it would be events that unfolded across the Atlantic Ocean in North America, that would ultimately force the hand of the British into sending colonists to the land of New South Wales. In 1775, the Thirteen Colonies in America broke out in armed rebellion against British rule. In the resulting Revolutionary War, which lasted eight years, the American rebels successfully shook off British rule and declared their independence, forming the United States of America. With that, Britain lost some of the most valuable colonies of its Empire, which was not only a problem in itself but also because for well over the past century, Britain had effectively transported criminals convicted of petty crimes to the American colonies as a means of populating them. With this option no longer available, the British government began to develop plans to ship its convicts to Australia instead and have them form the new colonies there in order to compensate for the loss of America.

With that, the eleven ships of the First Fleet carrying 1400 people, left Britain in May 1787 bound for Australia. They first landed at Botany Bay in the following January of 1788 but quickly found the area unsuitable for settlement, despite the recommendations reported by Captain Cook some year earlier. The captain of the First Fleet, Arthur Phillip, instead chose to sail further north to another site which was found to have an excellent natural harbour. Upon arriving there, Phillip assumed the powers of governor of the new colony and named the site Sydney Cove, thus marking the beginning of British settlement on the great southern continent.

Further convicts were transported onboard the Second and Third Fleets of 1790 and 1791 respectively, and upon their arrival in Sydney, formed the nucleus of the nascent colony. These convicts and their gaolers continued to make up the majority of New South Wales’s population in the early years, although as time passed more and more of the initial convicts were emancipated into free citizens after the terms of their penal sentences expired. The result of this was a burgeoning free civilian population, which was also supplemented by the retired soldiers of the colony, as well as an increasing number of free settlers arriving from Britain each year. This rapid increase in population however, brought with it its own set of social problems.

In March 1804, the first ever convict rebellion broke out in the Castle Hill area of the settlement. It was quickly suppressed by the colonial authorities, although just four years later, the very same regiment that put down the rebellion deposed the then colonial governor, William Bligh, in a coup d’etat. The Rum Rebellion of 1808, so named after the illicit rum trade the soldiers of the colony participated in, marked the first and only successful armed takeover of a government in Australian history. Following a brief period of military rule, Lachlan Macquarie was appointed as the new governor of New South Wales and promptly set about improving the colony’s civil infrastructure.

The successful establishment of Sydney as a colony proved to the British authorities that Australia was indeed a viable and tenable option for expanding the dominions of the empire. However, the success of Sydney had also reached the ears of the French, who were also exploring the continent for themselves around the same time that the British were establishing their colony. The Comte de Lapérouse’s expedition of 1788 and Nicolas Baudin’s expedition of 1800, observed the British activity in Sydney and reported back their findings to their superiors in Paris, which duly raised the possibility of France establishing a colony of its own in Australia.

In response to this, Britain increased its efforts to establish more colonies across the great southern continent, both to cement its control over the region and at the same time deprive the French of any colonial ambitions. Consequently, as the 19^th century progressed, a new mix of both penal and free British settlements appeared right across Australia; with Launceston and Hobart in Van Diemen’s land being founded in the 1800’s; the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in what is now Brisbane established in 1824; Perth and the Swan River colony of Western Australia in 1829; Melbourne, in what would later become the colony of Victoria in 1835 and South Australia, centred on the city of Adelaide in 1836.

All this settlement by Europeans however, quickly had an effect on the native Aboriginal peoples of the region, whose land after all this was. Knowing full well the hardships they would face whilst trying to establish colonies on the other side of the world, the British initially employed a policy of co-operation and understanding with the Aboriginal Australians so that they could gain their trust and help them survive in an otherwise unknown land. Nevertheless, despite the well-meaning intentions of the British, there was something being carried onboard their ships that would do great irreparable damage to the relationship between them and the Aboriginal people of Australia for years to come. That something was disease.

Due to the relative isolation of the Indigenous population over the past 60,000 years, they had little natural immunity to many of the diseases carried by Europeans. An outbreak of smallpox in April 1789 killed about half the Aboriginal population of the Sydney region, while only one death was recorded among the British settlers. Further epidemics of not only smallpox but other diseases such as measles, influenza, typhoid and tuberculosis continued into the 19^th century, which resulted in high death rates in Aboriginal communities.

In conjunction with the outbreak of disease, relations between the British and Aboriginal peoples were further strained by cultural misunderstandings, which often led to the outbreak of conflict. For example, the Aboriginal people viewed any animal (native or not) on their land as fair game to be hunted, whereas the British viewed this as poaching of their livestock. Furthermore, the settlers, in need of communicating with the Aboriginal peoples, occasionally took to kidnapping men, women and children from their local tribes, teaching them some basic words of English and have them serve as interpreters between the two communities. One of the first Aboriginal people taken in such a manner was Bennelong, who served as a communicator between the local Eora people around Sydney and the newly arrived settlers. Another important figure from the Aboriginal community at this time was that of Bungaree, who although was not kidnapped into service, voluntarily acted as go a between amongst the colonists and Aboriginal peoples. So valuable were his services that he was recruited to join the expedition of Matthew Flinders in charting the Australian coastline in 1802, which subsequently made him the first Australian born person to circumnavigate the country.

By the time Lachlan Macquarie was appointed as governor in Sydney, initiatives were being made to protect and accommodate the Aboriginal peoples within the expanding British settlements. Schools and farms were constructed in a bid to assimilate them into European ways of life, and churches and missions were established to teach the principles of Christianity. However, despite these measures, including the introduction of protected Aboriginal land reservations, much of the work done to foster better relations between the two groups was often in vain. The unrelenting expansion of the British settlements onto Aboriginal land quickly led to competition over resources, which then resulted in the outbreak of a series of conflicts known as the frontier wars.

Lasting from the late 18^th to the early 20^th centuries, these violent confrontations were often the result of the attempts of the aboriginal peoples to warn off the interloping settlers by attacking their farms, burning crops, stealing livestock and killing some of the colonists. In response, the European settlers would fight back and amidst this spiralling cycle of violence, indiscriminate massacres would be carried out on both sides.

Over the decades of the early 19^th century, increasing numbers of settlers began to arrive in the colonies and push further into the interior of the country in search of new opportunities. For the most part, these continued to predominantly hail from Britain and Ireland, with the practice of transporting convicts lasting well into the 1860’s. Although the arrival of more and more free settlers, not just from Britain but from other parts of Europe such as Germany, Switzerland and Italy, began to increase by the mid 1840’s to such an extent that calls for the establishment of local representative government and democratic reform began to be made. This marked a substantial shift away from the autocratic rule of the colonial governors and the emergence of the first state parliaments.

One of the primary reasons European settlers chose to move to Australia was because of the large tracts of land available for purchase, which could then be turned into productive farmland. The prospect of land ownership itself was valuable enough to many settlers but it was what lay beneath the land that would soon transform the fortunes of a lucky few. Gold.

Although gold deposits had been found back in 1823, it was the discovery by Edward Hargraves near Bathurst, New South Wales in 1851 that resulted in the biggest gold rush in Australia’s history. Within a period of ten years from Hargraves’ discovery, the population of Australia increased from 430,000 to 1,170,000 by 1861, as men from not only the neighbouring colonies, but from all over the world including Britain, America and China flocked to the goldfields of New South Wales and Victoria. The resulting mass influx of miners to the region quickly exhausted the easily accessible gold supply and for those who had not been fortunate enough to strike it rich, the local taxes imposed by the heavy-handed administration quickly added to a growing list of grievances. What initially began as peaceful protests soon gave way to open revolt against colonial rule, with the Battle of the Eureka Stockade taking place in December 1854. Although the rebel miners were defeated and promptly arrested for insurrection, they were subsequently acquitted at trial, owing in large part to the support from the Australian public, who shared their plight for fair treatment and proper representation. It was here that egalitarianism, especially before the law, became one of the hallmarks of Australian societal values.

The gold rush of the 1850’s was followed by a wider economic boom in the latter half of the 19^th century. With this came the development of housing, consumer goods and services, as well as urban development in the form of more towns and cities, which were being connected to an ever expanding rail network. By the 1880’s, Australia had grown rich from the gold rush and resulting economic boom to such an extent that the average income per capita exceeded that of the United States by 50%. However, not all aspects of Australian society benefitted from the opportunities available during these times, with the rural poor increasingly being left out of the equation. With no other means of supporting themselves, some took to acquiring wealth through more illicit means and became bushrangers. In essence, being Australia’s version of the American wild west outlaws of the same time period, the Bushrangers roamed the country districts committing acts of robbery against anyone or anything that crossed their path, whether it be a stagecoach, a local farmstead or even a town bank. The exploits of these criminals quickly earned them an often romanticised reputation as local folk heroes but in some cases, such as that of Ned Kelly, they became infamous and their tales enshrined into national legend.

The boom years for Australia would come to an end by the 1890’s, with the country entering into a period of economic depression, marked by an increase in unemployment, labour strikes and the emergence of trade unions. The issues experienced during this time, gave rise to an emerging and distinct Australian national identity, one that still retained ties to the mother country of Britain but one which also saw the path ahead to self-determination, outside of colonial rule.

With the dawn of the 20^th century, the six separate colonies of Australia, inspired by the growing national sentiment, concerted their efforts in pushing for a mandate of federalisation from the imperial British government in London. Following intense negotiations, a bill was passed by Parliament in July 1900 and the Commonwealth of Australia was subsequently proclaimed by the Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun on the 1st January 1901, with Sir Edmund Barton being sworn in as the nations first prime minister. One of the first major defining pieces of legislation introduced by the new nation was the White Australia policy which barred anyone of non-European heritage, particularly Asians, from entering the country. This was implemented in order to preserve the predominantly British makeup of Australia’s population, which contemporaries of the time argued would help coalesce the emerging nation into a singular cultural and socio-economic entity. In reality, it was nothing more than an apartheid like system designed to prevent other ethnicities from taking opportunities away from white Australians.

The early history of Australia had almost exclusively been shaped by the direct relationship between it and the colonial mother country of Britain but as the second decade of the 20^th century arrived, the fledgling nation would find itself irreversibly changed by the outbreak of the first world war. Although the majority of the fighting took place on the battlefields of Europe, the war for many Australian soldiers would be defined by their experience in the Middle East, serving alongside their comrades from New Zealand in a corps of troops that became known as the Anzacs. In the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, troops from Australia, New Zealand, as well as Britain, France and India suffered appalling casualties in their attempts to capture the Dardanelles Strait from a determined Ottoman Turkish army. Although the campaign ended in defeat for the Allies, it nevertheless marked a time of reckoning in the national psyche of Australia, with its troops earning a reputation for renowned bravery and selfless sacrifice in the face of adversity. The later years of the war would see Australian regiments deployed to the western front, as well as continuing fighting in the Middle East, where they displayed the same levels of courage and determination. By the wars conclusion in 1918, some 324,000 Australians had served overseas, with 60,000 dead and 150,000 wounded—the highest casualty rate of any allied force during the war.

The following inter-war years would see mixed fortunes for the Australian nation, for although it was granted dominion status from Britain under the statute of Westminster in 1931, it fell into an economic depression during the early 1930’s. Despite the austerity of this period, some of the most iconic Australian cultural achievements and legacies were forged during this era. For instance, the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service, later becoming the airline and national flag carrier of Qantas, was established in 1920, and the pilot Sir Charles Kingsford Smith completed the first aerial circumnavigation of Australia in 1927, before going on to complete the first ever transpacific flight the following year from Oakland in California to Brisbane in Queensland. Further legacies, particularly on the sports field, were also established with the likes of Don Bradman setting all time records on the cricket pitch and the race horse Phar Lap, becoming a championship winning thoroughbred with victories at the Melbourne Cup, Australian Derby and other races. Although perhaps trivial, these records and victories brought many Australians cause for cheer and celebration during what were otherwise dark days of the depression.

By 1939, Australia’s economic position had at least turned around, however, its geographical position in the wider Indo-Pacific region would soon bring it into contention with the expanding territorial ambitions of the Empire of Japan. Just as in the previous world war, Australia once again found itself answering the call to arms from the mother country, with its troops being deployed across the globe in the defence of the British Empire; from the cities of Europe to the deserts of North Africa and the jungles of Burma to the Pacific Islands. However, unlike in the previous war, Australia suffered several attacks on its own shores, with the Japanese Air Force launching bombing raids on the city of Darwin and other northern towns such as Broome and Townsville. Additionally, the Japanese and German navies conducted submarine warfare in Australian waters, sinking numerous merchant and military ships, and even launching a raid on Sydney harbour in June 1942.

By the time the war was drawing to a close in 1945, Australia found itself realigning its geopolitical interests, having realised that it could not solely rely on protection from its colonial overpower situated on the far side of the world. The entry of the United States into the war and their combined operations in the Pacific theatre alongside Australian forces undoubtedly resulted in a shift in diplomatic strategy to be more in line with views in Washington, rather than those in London.

The post-war years witnessed another economic boom which helped shape Australia into the country that it is today. The war-ravaged regions of the world, particularly in Europe, saw thousands of emigres move to Australia in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, seeking to build a better life for themselves. Such was the scale of migration from outside the usual British diaspora that the White Australia policy was made redundant in the face of economic and political reality. The influx of these newcomers helped boost Australia’s economy even further as they filled jobs in the expanding manufacturing industries and undertook construction of much needed housing and civil infrastructure projects.

For much of the latter half of the 20^th century, Australia transformed itself into the go to destination for many people looking to build a new and better life. It’s relative isolation compared to the rest of the world shielded it from many of the wider geopolitical issues of the age, such as the Cold War, although it’s closer ties with the USA did see it become involved in the Vietnam War during the 60’s and 70’s. Furthermore, this step change in foreign policy opened up the conversation to discuss the countries own domestic issues, specifically confronting the countries colonial past and the maltreatment of the indigenous Aboriginal peoples. The acknowledgment and reconciliation process for indigenous affairs became a key focus during these years, with efforts being made to address historical injustices and recognise the plight of Aboriginal peoples over the past centuries.

The move towards modernity and changing attitudes are perhaps best symbolised with the inaugural opening of cultural icons such as the Sydney Opera House in 1973 and the hosting of the Olympic Games in the year 2000, which showcased the beauty of the harbour city and the nation as a whole to the wider world. Today, Australia stands as a testament to its ability to adapt and thrive even in the most challenging of environments, which is perhaps a legacy of the early colonial settlers who arrived on its shores with so little but went on to create so much.