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AUS TR ALIA
T ake a trip Down Under . . . and into the past. Australia has one of the longest and richest
histories of any place on the planet, dating back tens of thousands of years. Aboriginal

Exploring World History

people continue to have a large influence on Australian culture, even in the centuries since
Europeans arrived. Today, Australia is a vibrant home to a growing multicultural population, but
it retains its own unique character. Find out how the events and people of the past have shaped
Australia today.

Exploring World History takes readers around the world and back again, diving deep into
regions of the world to make connections between past and present. History is an ongoing
process—this series shows readers how we got to today . . . and helps them imagine what might
be coming next.

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 Exploring World History

AUS TR ALIA
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ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-8351-6

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On the Cover: Ayers’ Rock is Australia’s most famous natural feature;

English Captain James Cook opened the island continent to Europeans’
arrival; Aborigines have been creating art and music for tens of
thousands of years.

Exploring World History

Africa
Australia
China
India
Japan
Latin America
North America
Polar Regions
 Contents
1 Exploring Australia
The Story of Australia 5
Creation and Discovery 6
Occupying the Land 10
2 Australia Before 1788
Living with the Land 12
Trade and Exchange 16
Aboriginal dancers
paint their bodies as
3 Visitors to Australia a part of their
European Voyages 1400s-1700s 18 performances.

The British Explore the Pacific Ocean 22

The Macassans in Northern Australia 25
4 White People Invade
Penal Colonies and Free Immigrants 26
Opening Up the Land 28
Chinese and Melanesian Workers 30
5 European Exploration
Exploring the Interior 32
Transcontinental Links 36
6 Fighting Back
Frontier Wars 38
Aboriginal Resistance 40
7 Modern Australia
Journeys to a New Land 42
Australia Today 44
Time Chart 46
Glossary 47
Index 48
 Australia is the driest
continent in the world.
Very little rain falls in
most of the arid (hot
and dry) and semi-arid
lands of the interior.

But Australia also has

tropical rain forests,
high, snow-covered Names and Maps
mountains, woodlands
and grassy plains. As British settlers and surveyors moved into the
interior of Australia, they named rivers,
mountains and other geographical features.
Naming the land went hand-in-hand with
making maps. For example, a river was named
and the name was recorded on the map. Places
were often named after colonial or British
officials or British cities and towns.
Today the Australian government has begun
to restore some of the original Aboriginal place-
names for the land because they now recognize
the Aborigines’ claim to Australia before settlers
arrived. For instance, the European name Ayers
Rock has been replaced by the Aboriginal name
– Uluru—for the rock.

4
 1 Exploring Australia
The Story of Australia
F or centuries before they actually ‘discovered’ and settled
the mysterious continent of Australia, European people
imagined that great riches were to be found there. But
Aborigines had been living in Australia for more than
50,000 years by the time Europeans treked across the
continent in search of gold and land for grazing animals
and growing crops.
Different Histories
Different peoples have different ways of remembering and
recording the past. There is no single history of a country
or its peoples—what you believe depends upon your point
of view and your present circumstances. Many Australians
think of the heroism of white explorers and settlers as
being their history. But the Aboriginal groups who lost
their land when white people came to explore and settle
Australia think of these explorers as invaders rather than
brave heroes.
Until recently, almost all Australian history was about
the experiences of white immigrants. Today, new history
books are being written that include the experiences of
Aboriginal peoples and non-European people who traveled
to Australia to live and work. This book looks at some of
the different histories of the exploration of Australia.
Exploring this Book
This book is divided into seven chapters. Chapters one and
two explore the lives of Aboriginal peoples before white
people settled in Australia in 1788. Chapters three and four
follow the journeys of European and Asian visitors to
Australia up to the late 1700s. Chapter five follows the
journeys of the people who explored Australia’s interior
(middle). The conflict between white settlers and
Aborigines is the subject of chapter six, and the book ends
by looking at Australia’s recent explorers.

5
Exploring Australia

Creation and Discovery

You would need to walk for more than five miles (nine km) to travel around
the massive rock known as Uluru.

A rchaeological evidence tells us that the ancestors of

modern Aborigines arrived in Australia at least
50,000 years ago. Archaeologists have examined Aboriginal
bones, stone tools, campsites and homes and have even
found the fossilized remains of food that ancient
Aborigines ate. But, unlike the scientists, traditional
Aborigines believe that they have lived in Australia since the
beginning of time. Aborigines call the beginning of time
and the events which shaped their world the Dreamtime. This Aboriginal rock carving from Ewaninga near
Alice Springs is a record of Aboriginal history.
Creation Aboriginal rock carvings can be found all over
Australia.
Aboriginal history has been passed on from generation to
This is an Aboriginal
generation by word of mouth. This is called oral history. axe-head made from
Ancient Aboriginal societies did not write down stories, flint.
but remembered them in songs and in paintings on bark,
rock or human bodies. In Aboriginal Australia, every group
had its own long and complicated creation history related
to its land. Aboriginal history is closely tied to religious
beliefs about the creation of the land during the Dreamtime.

6
 Exploring Australia

The Histories of the Dreamtime

Aborigines believe that during the Dreamtime ancestral spirit
beings came from under the ground or out of the sky and traveled
across the land creating mountains, valleys, rivers and deserts.
They also made animals, birds, reptiles, fish, plants and people.
The ancestral beings then gave Aboriginal people their laws and
customs. Once they had finished their acts of creation, they
disappeared into the sky or the sea or turned into parts of the land.
The Dreamtime is still the source of the songs, dances, art and
rituals Aborigines use to express their religion. The Aborigines
believe that they have to care for the places of spiritual significance
left by their ancestral spirits. They also keep and adapt the
laws and traditions that were first laid down by the spirit
beings. Different Aboriginal creation stories are told by each group.
The Djanggau Sisters
The Aborigines of north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern
Territory believe that human beings were created by the
Djanggau Sisters.
The two Djanggau Sisters were ancestral spirit beings known
as the Daughters of the Sun. Accompanied by their brother, they
came in a bark canoe from a land far away over the sea called the
Land of the Dead. Once at Arnhem Land, they created birds and
trees, shaped the country and gave names to places. Most
importantly, the sisters gave birth to the first humans.
The Crocodile Lake
The Aborigines of Narran Lake in New South Wales believe that
the lake was made by two crocodile-like ancestral spirit beings.
The crocodile-like beings were killed by the Ba’iame, a brave
hunter, because they had eaten his wives. As they died, the
crocodile creatures thrashed about and made a hollow in the
ground that became the lake.
Naughty Spirit Beings
As well as the ancestral spirit beings, Aborigines
believe that other spirits live on their lands.
Some of these are naughty spirits, like the
Net-nets in Victoria. The Net-nets hide
things from people and trip people up
but always manage to keep out of sight!
According to Aboriginal beliefs,
there are other spirits that live on the
land and are very powerful. For
instance, the man-like spirit of Doologa
is covered in hair and is found in
This traditional Aboriginal picture is painted the south coast regions of New South
with colored ochre (see page 17) on a piece of bark. Wales. Children are warned that this
It shows the Waijara ancestral spirit being with a spirit will capture them if they
kangaroo and some fiber baskets (see page 13). are naughty.
Aboriginal elders are responsible
for teaching the histories of the
Dreamtime to young people.
Exploring Australia

Gondwanaland
Over 200 million years ago all the land in the world formed
one continent. Eventually the land started to break into
two. Scientists think that 95 million years ago one half of
these two supercontinents (called Gondwanaland) began
to split into pieces. The continent of Australia was one of
these pieces.
Voyages Across the Sea
Unlike traditional Aborigines, archaeologists and
prehistorians do not believe that humans have always lived
in Australia. So where did the first Australians come from?
Archaeological evidence shows that people probably
This is what the world looked like over 200 million traveled from Southeast Asia to Australia at least 50,000
years ago. The shaded area of land eventually
became Australia.
years ago. At that time, Australia and Asia were separated
by sea. But the sea levels of the world were lower than they
We do not know what the first explorers to Australia are now and more land was exposed. There was probably
looked like or what type of boats they used. This is only about 60 miles (100 km) between some of the islands of
an artist’s impression of what these ancient travelers
might have been like. Indonesia and northern Australia. This was still a dangerous
journey on a small raft or in a canoe. No one knows
whether people came to Australia when their rafts and
canoes were accidentally carried there by the ocean
currents, or whether their voyages were planned.

8
 Exploring Australia

Traveling Through the Land

When the first Australians arrived in northern Australia,
they found a land with a hot, wet climate similar to
that in Southeast Asia. Gradually, groups of people began
to travel south to cooler areas. It took about 10,000
years for Aborigines to explore and settle the whole of
Australia. Fifty thousand years ago, Australia was 20
percent larger than it is now. It was joined to the islands
of Papua New Guinea in the north and Tasmania in the
south. The land became smaller as the sea level rose
(because the ice caps melted, see page 10) and covered
more of the coastline. Some scientists think that the sea
has risen 500 feet (150 m) in the last 50,000 years. But Tasmania separated from the Australian
the land of ancient Australia was not that different from mainland 12,000 years ago. Papua New Guinea
modern-day Australia. There were low mountains in separated from Australia 8,000 years ago.

the east, deserts in the center, marsupial animals and

eucalyptus or gum trees. Radiocarbon Dating
Archaeologists use radiocarbon dating
in their research into the ancient history
of Australia. This is a technique which
measures the level of radioactive carbon
that is present in all natural things
(such as shell, bone or wood). Because
radioactive carbon breaks down and
rots at a constant rate, it is possible to
tell how old materials are by measuring
how much they have decayed. Radio-
carbon dating can be done on burnt
materials like the shells found at
Aboriginal campsites.
An archaeologist at work in Australia's
outback. He is digging up fossils which will be
radiocarbon dated in a laboratory.

9
Exploring Australia

Occupying the Land

T he ancestors of today’s Aborigines

had to be tough and intelligent to
survive in Australia’s wide range of
Rising Seas
As the Earth’s climate became warmer
after the Ice Age, glaciers and the polar
Australia has areas of
swampland like the
one above. Swamps
provided plenty of food
for Aboriginal groups,
temperatures, weather and ice-caps began to melt. All this extra such as birds, fish and
environments. They also had to be able water made the level of the world’s even crocodiles.
to use the land to suit their needs. oceans rise. In some places the sea The Simpson Desert is
During the last Ice Age, between rose several yards in about ten years. a vast area of rolling
sandhills. It is very
10,000 and 60,000 years ago, the Aborigines living on the coast of difficult to find food in
world became much colder and drier. Australia were forced to explore inland Australia’s deserts, but
The Aborigines had to cope with Aborigines have
as their land became covered in water. managed to survive
massive temperature changes. Some The oral histories of the coastal even here.
land turned into desert and other areas Aboriginal communities of northern
became covered with rain forest. Australia tell us about important
Aboriginal ritual places which are
now under the sea.
 Exploring Australia

Wombats are stocky, round marsupials that grow

to about three feet (1 m) in length and can weigh as
much as 88 pounds (40 kg).

Giant Kangaroos
The first Aborigines hunted animals A photograph taken in 1878 of some Torres Strait islanders.
that have now disappeared. These
included diprotodonts, which were Torres Strait Islanders
giant marsupials. There were also Papua New Guinea became separated from the Australian
mainland 8,000 years ago (at the same time as the islands of
other giant marsupials such as Great Britain and Ireland became separated from Europe)
wombats (above) and koalas. Many because of the rise in the sea’s level. The tops of mountains and
of these animals became extinct volcanoes that remained above the sea became islands in the
Torres Strait. The Torres Strait between Australia and Papua
because the Aborigines hunted too New Guinea is about 90 miles (145 km) wide. A new population
many of them. Other animals became grew up in Papua New Guinea and these people moved on to
smaller over the centuries. Today’s the surrounding islands. The islanders depended on the sea for
gray kangaroos can reach over their food, but grew some crops as well. The people who live
on these islands are called Torres Strait Islanders and they are
six feet (two m) in height and today’s Australia’s second group of indigenous people.
wombats are relatives of the People from the eastern Torres Strait islands speak a
prehistoric wombats. Papuan language, while those from the western islands speak
an Aboriginal language. Goods were exchanged across the
There are about fifty different types of kangaroo in Torres Strait between the Aborigines, Torres Strait Islanders
Australia. This is a western grey kangaroo. and the Papuans.

The Great Barrier Reef is made up of reefs and islands. It runs along the east
coast of Australia for more than 1,200 miles (2,000 km).

11
 2 Australia Before 1788
Living with the land
A boriginal people have lived all
over Australia. This chapter tells
some of the stories of Aboriginal
Sometimes the search for food only
took two or three hours a day, but
in dry countryside it could take
groups throughout Australia. much longer.
Living off the Land The Aborigines carefully farmed
The Aborigines moved through their their plants. They scattered seeds and
lands as the climate and seasons introduced new plants from similar
changed. This way of life is called semi- landscapes elsewhere in Australia.
nomadic. They usually traveled in They harvested some plants and
families or clans. Everyone hunted or replanted others to make sure that they
gathered food. Children were taught would survive the harsh climate. They
how to find food by the adults. The also prepared food so that it could be
This is a witchetty grub.
Aborigines eat these Aborigines knew which plants and stored for the winter or when there
grubs both raw and
animals could be eaten, how to find was no rain to grow new plants.
cooked. Raw witchetty
grubs taste like butter and catch them, and how to prepare
and cooked witchetty This is a nineteenth-century photograph of a group
them for eating. Medicines, clothing, of Aborigines in southern Australia. These people
grubs taste like pork.
shelters, weapons and tools were all have probably painted themselves especially for the
photographer. It is also likely that the photographer
made from plants and animals. made the women wear European dresses.

12
 Australia Before 1788

An early European engraving of Aborigines hunting black swans.

Farming with Fire

Aborigines have been called ‘fire-stick’ farmers because
they used fire to farm the land. Different parts of the
country were set alight at certain times of the year or every
few years. Burning the land protected certain trees from Aboriginal men from Arnhem Land
in northern Australia. They are dressed for an
being strangled by weeds, encouraged new plants to grow, important ceremony.
cleared out lizards and small animals, and preserved
How Many Aborigines?
grasslands where grazing kangaroos and wallabies were
In 1788, when the British invaded
hunted. Aborigines used their skill to control the spread Australia, there were between 750,000
and temperature of the fires. They also used fire to burn and three million Aboriginal people
paths through dense forests to make traveling easier. living there. They were members of
about 650 different groups speaking
Tools and Weapons about 250 different Aboriginal
The Aborigines used a wide variety of tools and weapons. languages. These groups were rather
like the countries of Europe or the states
Digging sticks were used to dig up yams and catch of North America, but on a smaller scale.
reptiles and small animals by cornering them in their Every group had its own territory,
burrows. They used clubs, spears and boomerangs to fight politics and laws. The available water
as well as to hunt. Boomerangs were used in games or to kill and the weather decided how many
people could live off the land. Groups
birds. The Aborigines fished from canoes and rafts in rivers living in the more fertile country of
or on the open sea. southeast Australia had larger
populations and occupied smaller
areas of land.
Using Fibers Hand-woven The 250 different Aboriginal
bags from
Aborigines made many objects from the Cape York.
languages spoken throughout Australia
fibers of bark, leaves and plants. Plants were as different from each other as
were made into string or rope. String bags French is from Russian. There were also
and woven or coiled baskets were used for hundreds of dialects. Many Aboriginal
storage. In the rain forests of north people spoke several languages so that
Queensland, large funnel-shaped traps they could trade with neighboring
made by twisting fibres together were tribes. Complicated laws ruled the
used to catch small kangaroos called relationships Aboriginal people had
pademelons. In southeast Australia, eel with their families and with outsiders.
traps were made from twined fibers. These relationships were called ‘kinship
Aborigines hunted with nets throughout networks’ and they guided the way
the eastern, southern and western parts people behaved every day.
of Australia.

13
Australia Before 1778

The Aborigines used their knowledge of the habits of

animals to catch them. In Central Australia, they made emu
traps by fixing the points of sharpened wooden stakes at
the bottom of a large hole and covering the hole with
branches. The emus walked over the branches and fell to
their deaths on the spikes. Nets were used to catch fish,
birds and larger animals, including sea mammals called
dugongs. Complicated systems of channels, dams and
pens were made out of stones, and fish and eels were swept
along by the water currents into these traps. Poisons were
A painting by Benjamin Duterreau of a used to stun fish, and sticky sap was spread on tree branches
Tasmanian Aborigine, 1838. so that small birds would become stuck there.
Tasmanian Aborigines
Aboriginal people arrived in Tasmania
more than 25,000 years ago. Those at
Kutakina Cave in the southwest lived
further south than any other people in
the world. They hunted wallabies,
traded with other Aborigines, and
traveled long distances to collect a
mineral called ochre and stones for
making tools. As the climate became
warmer and wetter, rain forest
completely covered the Kutakina area
and the people left.
About 12,000 years ago the land
joining Tasmania to the Australian
mainland was covered by sea and
Tasmania became an island. The
Aborigines in Tasmania developed a
new way of life and began to look
different from the people on the
mainland. Hunting weapons, such as
boomerangs and spearthrowers, which
were used in mainland Australia, were
unknown in Tasmania.
Europeans forced Tasmanian Aborigines to live
on mission stations (see. page 40).

14
 Australia Before 1788

Aboriginal rock art of a kangaroo, found in

Kakadu National Park in the Northern
Territory.

Rock Art
These rocks are called The Pinnacles. Aborigines believe that these rocks were Aboriginal artists have been painting
created by ancestral spirit beings during the Dreamtime.
and cutting pictures into rocks for
Religious Land thousands of years. The oldest rock
paintings discovered so far are 30,000
Everything Aboriginal people did in their daily lives had years old. Rock pictures depict
both a practical and a religious purpose. This was because historical events such as images of the
everything in their lives was related to the laws laid giant marsupials of long ago (see
page 11), or the more recent arrival of
down during the Dreamtime (see page 7). These laws set European sailing ships (see below).
out the religious duties that Aboriginal people had to They also show images of Dreamtime
perform on their land. The land was marked by the tracks of beings. These images are cared for and
the ancestral spirit beings, who had left sacred sites behind repainted in special ceremonies by
Aborigines today.
them. Certain members of the group were made responsible There are spectacular cave galleries
for these sacred sites. During their religious ceremonies of paintings throughout Australia.
people sang and danced. Some tribes made paintings or Aboriginal artists used natural paints
decorated their bodies with feathers and ochre. Today, made from ochre, earth, bark and plants
to make the colors red, yellow, black,
rigines who still follow a semi-traditional lifestyle brown and white. Styles of painting
continue to carry out these sacred duties to their land, and vary from place to place.
those who in towns and cities still feel a bond with the
lands of their people.
An artist’s impression of Aborigines
hunting with spears.

15
Australia Before 1778

Trade and Exchange

This map shows some
of the trading routes for
goods throughout
Australia.

A boriginal trade grew up over

thousands of years. Technology,
music, art and stories were passed
along trading routes from group to
group. Gifts were exchanged between Hatchet stones
groups and sometimes goods were
traded for goods of a similar value. This
is called bartering and it was an Trade Routes As objects traveled
important form of contact between further from their
Aboriginal trade routes criss-crossed original homes their
Aboriginal people. Australia. These routes were made uses changed. Away
from the coast, pearl
Sharing and Giving whenever groups met to perform and baler shells were
In Aboriginal societies, sharing ceremonies, share food and trade no longer everyday
ornaments. For desert
valuable items was an important part goods. Aborigines would travel several Aborigines, sections of
of social, political and religious life. hundred kilometres to attend large shell became sacred
objects. Aborigines in
When strangers met, they greeted each meetings which were like trade Arnhem Land used
other by giving each other food or markets. They traveled along boomerangs made in
tools. Goods were exchanged to settle Central Australia as
traditional tracks laid down by the musical sticks rather
marriage arrangements and political or creator beings of the Dreamtime. than as hunting tools.
legal agreements. Songs, dances, These routes followed rivers and
stories and religious ideas were also waterways and included ‘safe’ paths
exchanged between groups. through the territory of rival groups.

16
 Australia Before 1788

Goods Travel Far The Dieri People

Raw materials (such as ochre, shells, The Dieri people lived in the dry
stones and food) and crafts were country of the Lake Eyre Basin in Central
traded throughout Australia. Goods Australia. During the winter, they
that were common in one area were camped in beehive-shaped huts along
the river. Dieri trading parties traveled
rare in another. For instance, 300 miles (500 km) south to trade with
Baler greenstones used to make high-quality the owners of the Parachilna ochre mines
shells near the Flinders Ranges. They
hatchet-heads were quarried at Mount
exchanged boomerangs, spears and nets
William in Victoria. These hatchet-heads were for ochre and grinding stones and
sold or exchanged up to 500 miles (800 km) performed special rituals and songs.
away from Mount William. Hatchet- When they returned to their camps,
heads from quarries in Queensland were sometimes after two months, the traders
were greeted with feasts.
traded in Central Australia. Pearl shell In the autumn, the Dieri sometimes
from the north-west Kimberley coast has traveled 250 miles (400 km) north to the
been found almost 1,200 miles (2,000 km) edge of the Simpson Desert. They traded
the ochre and grinding stones from the
inland! Baler shells from Cape York in
Flinders Ranges for pituri. This was a
Queensland and the Pilbara in Western Australia Pearl shells powerful drug made from the pituri
were also traded all over the continent. bush. It was one of the most prized
goods in Central Australia, and was
traded across an area of 300,000 square
Trade at Early Sydney miles. Hundreds of Aborigines gathered
When the British first settled at Sydney the Aborigines quickly at pituri markets.
adapted their own trading practices to meet the British demand The Dieri obtained other goods
for goods. The British needed food and wanted Aboriginal from the southern and northern coasts
weapons to take to museums in Europe. The Aborigines wanted through Aboriginal trading networks.
European iron and steel tools, hooks and fishing lines. The These included hatchet stones, special
British were used to owning goods and private property and woods to make shields, and objects
could not understand why the Aborigines wanted to share and made from baler and pearl shells.
exchange goods between friends, family and groups. This led to
misunderstandings between Europeans and Aborigines. This ochre mine in central western Australia
was used as recently as 1939.

A modem ironwood
carving with cockatoo
feathers by Declan
Apuatimi

Ochre
The mineral called
ochre (see picture right)
was very important in
Aboriginal life. It could
be found in a variety of
colors, including red
and yellow. Aborigines
used it to make a paint
to decorate their bodies
during ceremonies.
They also used ochre to
paint tools and rock art.

17
 3 Visitors to Australia
European Voyages 1400s-1700s
This map of 1486 is based on the map in Ptolemy’s
book Geography.

Dutch Traders
During the seventeenth century the
Dutch became the leading European
traders in Asia. They had a trading
base in Java and in 1606 Willem Jansz
sailed from there in the Duyfken. He
reached the western side of Cape York,
where he had a violent meeting with
the local Aborigines. The Duyfken was
the first European ship in written
history to reach Australia.

N o one knows when the first foreign visitors came to

Australia. The spoken histories of the Aborigines of
Arnhem Land tell of a mysterious people called the Baiini
In 1611 a new and fast sailing
route from the Cape of Good Hope
to Java was discovered. But some
ships were blown off course and
who visited in their sailing ships. Some historians believe as a result sighted the southern and
that Chinese ships, commanded by the Ming Dynasty western coasts of Australia. In 1616
admiral Cheng Ho, visited Australia between 1405-33, Dirck Hartog’s crew on the Eendrach
although there is not much evidence to prove this. Small landed at Shark Bay in Western
Australia. Hartog hammered a
ships from eastern Indonesia may have been blown on to pewter dish (see below) to a tree to
the Australian coastline. Historians know that fishermen mark this event. The dish was found
from Macassar were visiting northern Australia regularly 81 years later by another Dutch
by the early 1700s (see page 25). navigator, Willem de Vlamingh.

In Search of the “South Land” These are the remains of Dirck Hartog’s pewter dish.
The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the world
was a sphere. In 150 CE the Greek geographer Ptolemy
claimed that there must be a southern land to balance the
northern land or the world would fall into the stars.
Europeans continued to believe that the Terra Australis, or
South Land, existed long after Ptolemy’s death. They
imagined that it was filled with gold, silver and spices.
From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the
sea-going European powers competed with each other to
explore the world’s oceans and to find new trade routes
and lands to add to their empires. The European discovery
of “new worlds” led to the establishment of colonies in the
Americas, Africa, and Asia.

18
 Visitors to Australia

This map shows some

European voyages of
exploration.

A page from Abel Tasman’s diary of his

voyages (see page 21).

A drawing made in
the late sixteenth
century of a
Portuguese sailing
ship. This is the type
of ship that would
have come in search
of Australia.

19
Visitors to Australia

The Portuguese Mystery—The Dieppe Maps The Portuguese and the Spaniards
Between 1536 and 1566, cartographers (map makers) in the The Portuguese dominated the trade
French town of Dieppe made a series of maps. These maps routes between Europe and Asia
showed a southern continent discovered by the Portuguese during the sixteenth century and had
which they called Java-la-Grande. The land was about the same
size and in roughly the same place as the continent of Australia. a trading base in Timor. There is no
But there is no mention of Java-la-Grande in any Portuguese written evidence that the Portuguese
records or maps dating from that time. sailed south to Australia, but many
people think that they must have
explored this far.
From 1605 to 1607 Pedro
Fernandez de Quiros led a Spanish
expedition to find the South Land and
teach its inhabitants Christianity.
He thought he had found the South
Land when he landed on an island in
what is now called the New Hebrides.
He named this Austrialia del Espiritu
Santo, which means ‘Southern Land of
the Holy Spirit’ in Spanish. One of his
captains, Luis Vaez de Torres, sailed
two ships through the narrow strait
between Cape York and Papua New
Guinea on his way to the Philippines.
This is now called the Torres Strait,
but no one knows whether Torres
An artist’s impression of the Mahogany Ship being found in 1836. saw the Australian coast.
Keys and a Shipwreck
Some historians think that the Dieppe maps prove that the
Portuguese visited Australia as early as 1522. Two mysterious
The two Spanish ships commanded by Luis Vaez
de Torres sailing through the Torres Strait.
objects found along the coastline of southern Australia may be
further evidence of a Portuguese visit. In 1847, a bunch of keys
was found buried near the shore at Geelong in Victoria. The
Geelong Keys were described as ‘old’ and as the sort of keys that
would fit the lock of a seaman’s chest! But unfortunately the
keys were lost.
In 1836, the wreck of a ship was found in the sandhills
near Warnambool in Victoria. During the nineteenth century,
many people saw the ship and described it as an old-fashioned
vessel made of mahogany wood. These descriptions fit those of
a sixteenth-century Portuguese ship. No one has seen the
Mahogany Ship for 100 years. Was it covered by sand during
a huge storm? Was it burnt for firewood? The Victorian state
government recently offered a large reward to anyone who can
solve the mystery. Modern-day treasure-seekers are searching
the sandhills along the Victorian coast. If the Mahogany Ship
is ever recovered, the riddle of the Dieppe maps and Portuguese
visits to Australia may be answered.

20
 Visitors to Australia

A map of Australia
drawn by Abel Tasman
in 1644.

A portrait of Abel
Tasman, painted by
the Dutch artist
Jacob Cuyp.

The Expeditions of Abel Tasman

In 1642 and 1644 the Dutch East
India Company sent Abel Tasman
(1603-59) to look for trade
opportunities in the South Land.
Tasman navigated the coasts of the
island that he named Van Diemen’s
Land (now Tasmania) and then sailed
south to New Zealand. He also charted
(mapped) the northern coast of the
Australian mainland from his ship.
The Dutch mapped most of the
coastline of Australia, which they
called New Holland. But they were
disappointed. The continent appeared
to be either desert or dense rain forest.
There were no signs of gold, spices or
any other valuable items. After
Tasman’s voyages, there was no
European exploration of Australia’s
coastlines for 126 years.

21
Visitors to Australia

The British Explore the Pacific Ocean

The Voyage of the Endeavour

I n 1768 the British Admiralty put the navigator and

chart-maker Captain James Cook (1728-79) in command
of the best-equipped scientific expedition ever. Cooks ship
Endeavour went to Tahiti to study the planet Venus as
it moved across the sun. From Tahiti, Cook was instructed
to explore the South Pacific.
The Endeavour sailed to New Zealand and then to
the east coast of Australia where a party landed at Botany
Bay, near the site of the modern city of Sydney. The
ship then sailed along the east coast and was damaged on
the Great Barrier Reef. After repairs, Cook sailed around
Captain James Cook painted in 1775 by
Cape York and landed on a small island he named Nathaniel Dance
Possession Island. Here, he claimed all the land he had
seen for King George III and called it New South Wales. Cook and the Aborigines
In his journal Cook described the
Aborigines of eastern Australia as being
‘far more happier than we Europeans’
because they lived in a society where
everyone was equal and ‘where all things
necessary for life’ were provided by the
earth and the sea. The Aborigines did
not want ‘magnificent houses of household
stuff’ because they enjoyed the ‘wholesome
air’ of a ‘warm and fine climate’.

A painting by Willem van de

Velde the Younger of Captain
James Cook's ship the Resolution
in a storm.

22
 Visitors to Australia

Cook’s Second and Third Voyages This map shows the routes of Cook’s three
of exploration.
Cook commanded the Resolution on his second and most
important voyage of exploration in 1772-75. This voyage
proved that the land he had named New South Wales was
the only continent in the southern hemisphere. Cook was
the first navigator to travel around the world from west to
east and the first to enter the Antarctic Circle. On a third
voyage from 1776 to 1779, Cook explored the islands of
Hawaii and sailed north to the Arctic Circle. Cook returned
to Hawaii in 1779, and was killed there during a fight
between the Hawaiians and his crew.
Captain Cook was killed when a fight broke out between his crew and the
Hawaiians. This is how the artist J. Clevely imagined that Cook died.
A portrait of William Dampier.
Pirates Explore
Australia First!
The English adventurer William
Dampier (c. 1650-1715) spent three
months in Australia in 1688. He was a
crew member on the pirate ship Cygnet.
The pirates landed on the northwest
coast of Australia so that they could
make repairs to their ship. Dampier
later returned to England where he
wrote a book about his experiences
called A New Voyage Around the World.

23
Visitors to Australia

Circumnavigating the Continent

Gradually, British maps of the Australian coast were
completed. The navigator Matthew Flinders (1774-1814)
surveyed the southern and eastern coastlines, and was the
first person to circumnavigate the continent between 1802
and 1803. On his way back to England, Flinders stopped at
the French island of Mauritius. Here he was thrown into
prison because France and Britain were at war. During his
six years in prison, Flinders wrote about his Australian
expedition. He was finally released in 1810 and his
Joseph Banks named this common Australian important book A Voyage to Terra Australis was published
plant the Banksia serrata after himself.
in 1814—a day before he died from ill-health. Flinders’
Scientists in the Pacific maps of Australia were so accurate they were still used
The British began to explore the Pacific 50 years after his death.
Ocean in search of trade in the 1760s.
European maps of the Pacific were
incomplete and the South Land was still
a mystery.
During the eighteenth century
there was a new interest in Europe in
natural science. The British explored
the Pacific to discover more about
nature and to collect and record all
forms of life, from butterflies and bees
to palm trees and volcanoes. Plants,
animals and sometimes people were
taken back to Britain to be examined by
scientists and displayed in museums.

This portrait of Joseph Banks was painted by

Thomas Phillips when Banks was president of
the Royal Society.

This is a picture of the First Fleet landing at Botany Bay in 1788. The
picture is dated 1789 and includes one of the first images of an Aborigine
seen by British people.

Joseph Banks and Botany Bay

The young botanist Joseph Banks (1744-1820) accompanied
Cook on the Endeavour, and collected 3,600 plant and animal
specimens on the voyage—1,400 of which were new to
Europeans. Cook named the place where the Endeavour first
landed Botany Bay because Banks gathered so many plants there.
In 1778, Banks was elected president of the Royal Society
and became very influential. He recommended Botany Bay as
the ideal place for a convict settlement. In 1788, the First Fleet
of convicts landed at Botany Bay but could not find enough
drinking water to support a settlement. So they moved five miles
(nine km) north and began building the town of Sydney.
 Visitors to Australia

The Macassans in Northern Australia

F rom the 1700s, and possibly
earlier, the coasts of northern
Australia were visited regularly by
Trepang were Australia’s first
export. The Macassans sold them to
the Chinese, who believed that they
fleets of dug-out sailing canoes called were delicacies with healing powers.
praus. These came from Macassar in The Macassans gathered about 350
Sulawesi, now in modern-day tonnes of trepang every year.
These are the seeds of Indonesia. The crews of the praus have Trepang were collected by hand
tamarind trees. They
have been found at old become known as Macassans. in shallow water or by diving from
Macassan camps and The Macassans’ canoes took about small canoes in deeper water. They
prow that the
Macassans brought this ten days to reach Australia. Probably were then boiled in huge iron pots
fruit to Australia. between 20 to 60 praus sailed every before being dried in the sun and
A number of Aborigines year to Arnhem Land in Australia’s smoked on bamboo racks.
journeyed to Macassar Northern Territory. Each prau carried
with the trepang Friendly Traders
collectors and a few
about 40 crew members. Smaller fleets
traveled as far as also visited the Kimberley coastline Macassan crews worked together
Singapore.
of Western Australia. setting up camps that protected them
from Aboriginal attacks. But relations
The Macassan praus Trepang Fisheries between the two peoples were mostly
(below) which sailed to The Macassans came to collect
northern Australia have friendly. The Aborigines on the coast
not been used in trepang. Trepang are sea creatures also became used to the regular visits of the
Sulawesi for at least known as sea-cucumbers. They
50 years. In the 1980s
Macassans. Aborigines started to use
the Macassan voyages burrow at the bottom of reefs and can Macassan words, wrote songs and
to Australia were be up to two feet (60 cm) long. performed dances and ceremonies
recreated. A prau was
built and named the about their visitors. They painted
Had Marege. It sailed pictures of the praus and copied
from Sulawesi to
Australia during the wet their design.
season of 1987-88.

25
 4 White People Invade
Penal Colonies and Free Immigrants
T he British claimed that under English law Australia was
terra nullius or unoccupied. This means that the British
did not recognize the fact that Aborigines already lived
there. Instead, the British argued that they were the first
people to claim Australia and had the right to settle there.
From an Aboriginal point of view, the British were invaders.
Convicts in Exile
In January 1788, the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay from
England after a journey of eight months. A few government
officers and several hundred convicts came ashore to build
the penal colony of New South Wales. Over the next
80 years, about 137,000 men and 25,000 women were Dividing the Continent
transported to Australia. The majority of these convicts had The British divided Australia into
separate areas of land, called colonies.
been very poor in Britain and had stolen food or other small Each colony had its own government.
items. For this they were transported to Australia with an The map above shows the boundaries of
average sentence of seven years hard labor (enforced the colonies in 1911. Colonies’ boundaries
frequently changed before 1911.
work). Most convicts had to work for people who had gone
to Australia of their own free will (called free settlers).
A painting of 1853 shows an immigrant family on
If the convicts misbehaved they were chained together and their way to the goldfields. You can see mining
made to work on road-gangs. The transportation of convicts equipment such as shovels, picks and gold-pans
among their belongings.
to New South Wales and Tasmania was abolished in the
1840s. In Western Australia transportation began in 1850
and did not stop until 1868.
 White People Invade

Free Immigration
During the early nineteenth century, unemployment and
poverty increased in Britain. The British government
wanted to send the poor to the Australian colonies. The A cartoon of convicts outside Sydney jail in 1800.
Australian colonies needed male labourers to clear and A painting of 1823 (left) of the harbor of Port
farm the land and single women to work as servants and Jackson and the country between the city of Sydney
and the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.
marry the laborers. So between 1830 and 1850 the British
government agreed to assist people by paying their
traveling expenses to Australia. After the discovery of
gold in the early 1850s, there was no shortage of
immigrants traveling south to seek their fortunes.
The Journey South
On the transportation ships, convicts were crammed below
deck and allowed on deck for fresh air only once a day. Caroline Chisolm on board a ship bound
The conditions were not much better for poor or ‘assisted’ for Australia.
immigrants. They were packed into large dormitories
(sleeping areas) on the lower decks of the ship. These were
Caroline Chisholm
When Caroline Chisholm (1808-77)
lined with bunks and had a dining table down the middle. came to Sydney from England in
In this crowded, airless space disease spread quickly. 1838, she was shocked that the
government gave no help to female
Convicts caged below deck on their way to Australia. immigrants when they first arrived.
Many women were unable to find jobs
or places to stay and had no choice but
to live on the streets. Caroline
Chisholm set up a hostel, or home, for
newly-arrived women. She also helped
at least 11,000 immigrants find jobs
and homes.
In colonial Australia, men greatly
outnumbered women. Caroline
Chisholm believed that women and
children were needed to make society
civilized and so she encouraged British
families to emigrate to Australia.

27
White People Invade

Opening Up the Land

I n 1901, the nation of Australia was formed when the
colonies joined together under a national government. By
this time, most of the land in Australia had been taken by
white settlers for agriculture and mining. Land was needed
to provide food and raw materials for the new settlers and
to supply British trade. By the 1830s wool was Australia’s
most valuable export. Later in the century meat, wheat and
gold also became important exports.
Squatters and Selectors
The colonial governments sold, leased (rented) and gave
Stock Routes
land to settlers, although some settlers made their own
Throughout the nineteenth centuary,
rules. From the 1820s wealthy pastoralists (farmers who more and more grazing land was
used the land for grazing animals), known as squatters, claimed by pastoralists. Sheep and
began occupying large areas of land. They moved in their cattle (called stock) had to be herded
on to these lands, and then on to the
cattle and sheep and built fences and homes. They were markets in the capital cities of the
often the first Europeans to enter a region and were southeast. Thousands of miles of
followed by shopkeepers, tradespeople, and colonial stock routes soon criss-crossed the
officials such as the police. continent (see above).
The workers who moved the stock
By the mid 1800s, schemes were introduced to help were called drovers. It could take
more people to select small areas of farming land. But several months for the drovers and their
many of the farms taken up by these people, called dogs to take the stock to market. One of
the longest stock routes ran from
selectors, failed because the land was poor and Katherine in the Northern Territory,
European farming methods didn’t work on south to Alice Springs and on to
Australian soil in Australia’s climate. Adelaide on the coast.

28
 White People Invade

Gold
In 1851, gold was discovered at Ophir
in New South Wales. Within days,
2,000 miners had rushed there to
begin digging. Other gold fields were
opened in Victoria during the 1850s,
in Queensland during the 1860s, in
the Northern Territory during the
1880s, and in Western Australia
during the 1890s.
The discovery of gold had an
enormous impact. By the end of 1851,
half of the adult men in Victoria were
working on the gold fields. The
gold-miners were known as
prospectors. As hundreds of thousands A mining scene from the Australian gold fields.
of people poured in, the colonial
population became three times larger
in only ten years. Large mining towns On the Track
sprang up, and in the capital cities More workers were needed on stations and farms at particular
times of the year to cope with harvesting, shearing and fruit
grand buildings were constructed with picking. Many workers traveled through the country looking
the money made from gold-mining. for this work. The wool industry depended on shearers who
Only a few miners became rich. went from farm to farm cutting sheep’s fleeces. Australian
The merchants and shopkeepers were writers and painters have created many myths about these
workers, called bushmen.
the ones who really made their When unemployment was high, thousands of poor
fortunes. Most miners abandoned the Australians would leave the cities and towns with their
gold fields after a few years. But some belongings in a ‘swag’ (bag) and go ‘on the track’. This
happened during the depressions of the 1890s and the 1930s.
traveled from the gold fields of Men, and some women and children, traveled on foot, on
Victoria and New South Wales to the horseback and in wagons through the country, hoping to find
new gold-mines in north and west work and trying to live off the land.
Australia. Prospectors roamed through Men on the track play cards in 1878.
the outback (the interior of Australia), One man is leaning on his swag.
always looking for a gold nugget—and
they continue to do so today.

This nineteenth-century painting (left) of

cattle droving in New South Wales is by the
Australian artist S. T. Gill.

29
White People Invade

Chinese and Melanesian Workers

P eople who came to Australia from
places outside Europe had to
adjust to a totally different way of life.
The Australian colonies were part of
the British Empire and white settlers
thought that they were better than
colored people. When the new
Australian federal parliament was
formed in 1901, the first legislation
they passed was the White Australia
Policy. This limited the number of non-
white immigrants who could come to
Australia. But white settlers also This is a photograph of a Chinese funeral in an Australian town around 1890.
believed that non-white people could
be used as cheap labor on the sugar The Great Gold Mountain
cane plantations in north Queensland. Chinese miners began their journey to Australia—which
The Chinese in Australia they called the “great gold mountain”—from farming
In the 1840s, British settlers brought villages in southern China. Almost all the immigrants
Chinese people to the colonies to work were men whose fares were paid by wealthy Chinese
on farms. Chinese immigration merchants. To repay this debt they had to work for one year
increased dramatically with the without wages. Any gold found during this time belonged
discovery of gold in the 1850s. By to the merchants.
1857 there were 25,000 Chinese Fights broke out on the gold fields between white miners and Chinese miners.
people in Victoria alone. On some This drawing by S. T. Gill was made in 1856.
gold fields the Chinese outnumbered
Europeans by seven to one.

30
 White People Invade

Labor from the Pacific Islands

In north Queensland, white settlers wanted a
large and cheap labor force to work on the farms
and sugar cane plantations. So from the 1860s,
about 60,000 Melanesian workers were brought
from islands in the Pacific, mainly the Solomons
and the New Hebrides. Many were kidnapped or
tricked into going to Australia, but others
agreed to go.
Life in the Canefields
The Melanesians were given a contract to work
The Chinese miners walked along this route to the gold fields of for a small wage for a minimum of three years.
Victoria.
After that, they could choose to return to their
Walking to the Gold Fields islands or continue working in Australia.
White colonists did not welcome the Chinese on the Although they were legally free, they worked and
gold fields. Riots broke out and some Chinese lived like slaves. Work in the canefields was hard
miners were killed. In 1855, the Victorian and the housing and food provided by the
government introduced a new tax on every Chinese
immigrant. To avoid the tax, ships would unload plantation owners was often bad. Thousands of
their Chinese passengers along the South Australian Melanesians died from disease and exhaustion.
coast. From here, the Chinese walked for hundreds
of miles through desert and bushland to reach The End of Forced Labor
the Victorian gold fields. This was a dangerous and The Australian government stopped the use of
difficult journey and many people died on the way.
labor from the Pacific Islands after 1904.
Chinese tents and public notices like these reconstructions Many Melanesians did not want to leave
would have been a common sight on the Australian gold fields.
Australia, which they regarded as their home, but
most were forced to go back to the islands where
they were born.
Melanesian workers unload and stack sugar cane on a
Queensland planation.

31
 5 European Exploration
Exploring the Interior

A portrait of Charles Sturt.

Charles Sturt surveying the desert in 1829.
The Inland Sea
F rom 1788, when the first penal settlement was
established at Sydney, the British began exploring
Australia in search of farming and grazing land. During the
The search for the inland sea was the main
aim of Australian exploration for several
years. In 1827 the British explorer Charles
Sturt (1795-1869) discovered the Darling
1800s, expeditions set off from the various new cities and River. The next year, he sailed down the
towns on the coastline. But the dense forests of the south- Murrumbidgee River to the mouth of the
east, the lack of rivers and water-holes, and the vast Murray, Australia’s largest river.
stretches of desert made the interior of the continent Sturt’s expedition proved that most of
the eastern half of Australia drained into
difficult to explore. the Murray-Darling river system. This
The Explorers explained why the rivers flowed west, but
people still believed in an inland sea.
The first European explorers were military officers. They Edward John Eyre (1815-1901) led three
were soon followed by groups of trained surveyors, expeditions north from Adelaide between
1839 and 1841 to look for the imaginary
scientists and adventurers sent by governments and private sea. After finding Lake Torrens, he thought
companies. However, pastoralists in search of land and that the sea was part of a huge horseshoe-
prospectors seeking minerals were often the first white shaped lake blocking the way north.
people to travel through remote parts of Australia. Crossing East to West
Rivers Flowing Inland After failing to travel around his imagined
lake, Eyre headed west into the desert with
After the Blue Mountains (west of Sydney) were crossed in a white companion and three Aboriginal
1813 by William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William guides. The party was attacked by local
Charles Wentworth, the exploration of southeast Australia Aborigines, and only Eyre and one
began. The discovery that the Lachlan and Macquarie Aboriginal guide, Wylie, survived. Together
they continued west along the shores of the
rivers flowed to the west—that is inland—convinced many Great Australian Bight. Eyre was
people that there must be a sea in the middle of Australia. In dependent on Wylie’s survival skills during
1817, the Englishman John Oxley (1783-1828) reported the gruelling months it took to reach the
western Australian coast. By the end of the
that the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers ended in marshes, journey Eyre had become the first European
and suggested that they were on the edge of an inland sea. to cross the western half of Australia.

32
 European Exploration

A portrait of
John McDouall Stuart.

Some of the routes

taken across Australia
by European explorers
in the nineteenth century.
A portrait of
John Eyre.

Sturt and the Inland Lake

Charles Sturt believed that there was a lake
as well as a sea in the middle of Australia.
In 1844, he led an expedition to try and
find it. They traveled during a time of severe
drought and were forced to wait near a
water-hole until rain fell. When Sturt’s party
finally reached the edges of the vast Simpson
Desert, they were forced to go back because
of a lack of water. Sturt’s expedition, and
the journeys of others into the interior,
proved that no inland sea or lake existed.

33
European Exploration

The Race to Cross the Continent

By the early 1850s, Europeans had mapped much of
Australia and its good farming land. But soon explorers
were competing to cross the continent in one journey.
In 1860 an Irish ex-police officer, Robert O’Hara Burke
(1820-61), left Melbourne with an expedition of 17 men,
enough food for several months, camels, horses, and
piled with firewood. Burke was so impatient that he
left most of his expedition members at different points
(called depots) on the way. From his second depot at
A portrait of Robert A portrait of John Wills.
O’Hara Burke. Merindie, Burke headed north with his second-in-
command, the Englishman John Wills (1834-61), two men
Burke and Wills A carving on a tree at
make their way across named King and Gray, and some camels and provisions. the Coopers Creek depot
the desert. The camels died, but the men reached the Gulf of of Robert O’Hara Burke.
Carpentaria, and so became the first Europeans to cross
Australia from north to south. They took weeks to walk
back to the Coopers Creek depot, and Gray died on the
journey. When the others reached it, exhausted and
starving, they found that the depot had been abandoned
only hours earlier. Local Aborigines offered them food, but
Burke shot at them. He and Wills died, but King survived
because he accepted Aboriginal help.

34
 European Exploration

The dead Robert O’Hara Burke, with King by Afghan immigrants brought camels to central Australia in the 1860s.
his side. Known as “ships of the desert”, the camels were used to carry goods.

The Scotsman John McDouall West of the Center

Stuart (1815-66) also dreamed of The final European explorations of Australia were into the
crossing the continent. He made two desert west of the Overland Telegraph Line. The telegraph line
was completed in 1872 and followed Stuart’s route through
failed attempts, driven back by Central Australia. In 1873 the German, William Gosse
Aboriginal attacks and the harsh (1842-81) left the telegraph station at Alice Springs and came
conditions. From 1861 to 1862, Stuart upon Uluru (Ayers Rock), a massive dome-shaped rock over
two miles (three km) long. The same year, Peter Warburton
succeeded in traveling from Adelaide (1813-89) led an expedition west from Alice Springs across the
to Arnhem Land through the Great Sandy Desert. John Forrest (1847-1918) traveled from
geographical center of the continent. the western Australian coast across the desert to the telegraph
line in 1874, while Ernest Giles (1835-97) used camels as pack
animals to travel west from the Telegraph Line to Perth in 1875.
All these expeditions confirmed that the center of Australia
was dominated by huge deserts.
The Prussian explorer and naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt
(1813-48) arrived in Sydney in 1842 to explore Australia. He
traveled from southern Queensland to Port Essington on the
Gulf of Carpentaria. He then made two attempts to cross the
continent from east to west, from Queensland to Western
Australia. On the second attempt in 1848, he disappeared
without trace in the interior.
Paul Edmund Strzelecki (1797-1873) was a Polish explorer
who arrived in Sydney in 1839. He explored Tasmania and New
South Wales, crossed the Australian Alps, and mapped much of
eastern Victoria. When he returned to Europe in 1843 he
published several books about his travels.
Aboriginal Guides
Expeditions often relied on the knowledge of Aborigines to
guide them and find food and water. But these Aboriginal
guides did not receive the recognition or the rewards given
to white explorers. Some explorers, such as Thomas Mitchell
(1792-1855), a Scot who was famous for surveying south-
eastern Australia, murdered and ill-treated Aborigines. In
several instances, Aborigines attacked expeditions, but on
other occasions they saved explorers from dying.

35
Europeans Exploration

Transcontinental Links
A s European settlements spread
across Australia the demand for
roads and communication services
increased. Making roads and laying
railways was hard work. The first roads
were built by convicts, and Chinese
laborers constructed the railway in
the Northern Territory. The workers
who laid the Overland Telegraph Line
in 1870-72 toiled across thousands of
miles of dry, hot land that had been The viaduct on Hills railway in South Australia.
unexplored by Europeans only a
decade before. All these people were, in Rail Links
different ways, explorers far from home. By the 1870s railways were being built for the new mining
River Transport and pastoral towns. In the Murray region, the railways
gradually took over from the paddle-steamers. Railway
After Europeans discovered the great
tracks from the capital cities and the coast ran into the
Murray River and its tributaries, towns
interior in a vast system. Eventually, the east coast from
and pastoral stations were set up in
Sydney to Cairns was joined by rail, Adelaide was linked
the Murray region. The quickest and
to Alice Springs, and a railway was built from Adelaide
cheapest form of travel between these
across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth.
settlements was by boat along rivers.
During the 1880s, barges and paddle- Roads Replace Rail
steamers traveled thousands of miles When cars became cheaper in the 1950s, roads began to
through the waterways of the Murray- replace railways as a cheap and efficient way of transporting
Darling region. people and goods. A network of national motorways was
Supplies being unloaded on the Murray River built and roads were upgraded. Today roads are the most
in the 1860s. important transport routes throughout Australia.

36
 European Exploration

Air Travel
Australia’s vast size makes air travel
very important. Early pilots tested
many new planes in Australia. The
most famous was Charles Kingsford
Smith (1897-1935) who set the world
records for crossing Australia by air and
for flying from America to Australia.
Airlines began offering services
throughout Australia during the
1920s, and international services by
the 1930s. Then, it took just over
12 days to fly to London. Only wealthy
Planting the first pole of the Overland Telegraph on September 15, 1870.
people could afford to travel by air
The Overland Telegraph before the 1960s.
In 1872 the Overland Telegraph was completed, connecting
Australia with overseas telegraph networks for the first time.
More than 1,800 miles (3,000 km) of telegraph lines and poles
were built from the South Australian coast through the center of
the continent to Darwin. From Darwin, the line went via
submarine cable to Indonesia and then through Singapore,
Malaysia, India, Egypt and Europe to Britain. In just a few
hours, a message in Morse code could be sent over 12,000
miles (20,000 km). This was amazingly fast at a time when it
took weeks to travel from Britain by ship. At each telegraph
post, an operator would receive the message and then tap it on
to the next post. The telegraph system brought Australia into
close contact with international trade and banking and had a
significant effect on the economy. The modern-day Flying Doctor Service takes
essential medical help to people living in
the outback.
The first Australians to fly from Britain to Australia, 1919.
The Flying Doctor Service
Air travel and communication networks
have changed the lives of isolated
Australian communities. Small planes
and helicopters are now used on cattle
and sheep farms to round up stock and
check fences. The Flying Doctor Service
operates medical and ambulance
services from its fleet of airplanes.
It also gives medical advice over the
radio, and provides the radio facilities
for the School of the Air—a school for
pupils who live in isolated places.
This educational service is unique to
Australia and involves teachers and
students communicating by radio over
thousands of miles.

37
 6 Fighting Back
Frontier Wars
sentenced to death for killing 28
Aborigines at Myall Creek in New
South Wales, but this was very
unusual. The government and its
courts rarely punished Europeans for
murdering or mistreating Aborigines.
Aboriginal armed resistance was
so strong that it delayed the settlement
of some areas of Australia for several
years. In Queensland alone, at least
1,000 settlers and 10,000 Aborigines
were killed fighting. European

E uropeans landed in Australia at many different points massacres of Aborigines and

on the coast and so there were lots of places where Aboriginal armed resistance to
Europeans and Aborigines met for the first time. European invasion continued until the 1930s in
exploration took place over a long period of time and under parts of the Northern Territory.
many different circumstances. For coastal Aborigines the
arrival of Europeans from the sea was totally unexpected. Aborigines sometimes set fire to the land to force
European settlers and their stock to leave (above
But news of the whites, their animals and their guns, left). This picture was painted in 1836.
traveled quickly into the interior. Once the Aborigines
realized that the Europeans intended to stay and take their During this expedition to the Torres Strait in 1842,
some European explorers were threatened
lands war broke out all over Australia. by Aborigines.
Open War
The Aborigines resisted European settlers by
fighting battles with them and also through
guerrilla warfare. Groups of Aborigines made
surprise attacks on settlers and their sheep
and cattle, and then disappeared into the bush.
At first, Aboriginal spears and fighting skills
could match the slow-loading guns of the
settlers. But by the 1860s the colonists were
using rifles and revolvers which didn’t need
loading as often and this gave them an
advantage. The frontier was a violent place.
The Europeans attacked Aboriginal men and
women, kidnapped children and murdered
entire groups. In 1838 seven white men were

38
 Fighting Back

By 1890, many Aboriginal people had to rely on

the government for food.

Disease and Starvation Europeans driving Aborigines from their lands.

European diseases such as smallpox, The Tasmanian Aborigines
influenza, measles and even the Europeans settled in Tasmania in 1803 and the first massacre of
common cold were deadly for Aborigines occurred a year later. In the 1820s more settlers
arrived and the Aborigines attacked them and their animals. In
Aboriginal populations, who had no 1828 the Governor of Tasmania declared war on the Aborigines,
immunity to them. Smallpox almost giving settlers permission to shoot them on sight.
wiped out many Aboriginal groups in In 1830 settlers made a human chain called the Black Line.
In this chain they moved across the island, driving Aborigines
the early 1800s. Influenza and measles out of the settled lands. Then, George Augustus Robinson
killed large numbers of people in Central (1788-1866) was appointed by the Tasmanian government to
Australia as recently as the 1950s. As make contact with the Aborigines that were left and capture
Aborigines were driven from their them. Robinson gathered the remaining 135 Aborigines and
took them to Flinders Island. In 1847 the 47 survivors of this
lands and their food supplies, some group were sent back to Tasmania. The last of these survivors,
died of starvation. From an original a woman named Truganini, died in 1876. From that time,
Aboriginal population of three million whites have called Truganini the last of the Tasmanians’. Many
people still believe that Tasmanian Aborigines are extinct, but
in 1788, only 50,000 were left in 1900. Aboriginal communities had been
founded on the islands of the Bass Strait.
Pemulwuy Today, Tasmanian Aborigines
are fighting for
Pemulwuy (died 1802) was a famous
recognition
Aboriginal guerrilla leader. His peoples’
and rights to
lands lay around Botany Bay, near
their traditional
Sydney. Between 1790 and 1802,
lands.
Pemulwuy led attacks on British settlers
and destroyed their crops. After a raid
on the settlement at Parramatta in 1797,
the British offered a reward for his Some
capture or death. Pemulwuy was shot in Aborigines were
persuaded to
a police ambush. The Governor of New join a Native
South Wales sent his head to England Police force
as a scientific specimen. Pemulwuy’s which was used
son, Tedbury, succeeded him in waging to drive out
guerrilla warfare against the British, other Aborigines
but he was captured and imprisoned from rival
in 1805. groups.

39
Fighting Back

Aboriginal Resistance
Missions, Reserves and Farms
Colonial governments set aside land
where Aborigines were forced to live.
These areas were called reserves and
were run by the government.
Aborigines were also forced to live
on mission stations controlled by
Christian missionaries. The
missionaries tried to make Aboriginal
people give up their beliefs and
religious ceremonies. The government
gradually sold a lot of the reserve land
to white farmers, so the Aborigines
A famous painting of 1840 by Benjamin Duterrau entitled The Conciliation. were left to live in camps on the
The painting shows George Augustus Robinson with Tasmanian Aborigines (see
box on page 39). edges of towns.
Government Policies
T he British tried to make the Aborigines follow a
European way of life. The Aborigines were forced to
settle down, become farmers, forget their religious beliefs
By 1911, all the Australian states had
passed Protection Acts which set out
and become Christians. During the nineteenth century, how Aborigines could live. In some
white people predicted that Aboriginal peoples would states, Aborigines needed permission
become extinct. However, Aboriginal resistance to to move around the country or even to
European society was too strong for this to happen and get married. They could not own
early this century Aborigines began growing in numbers. property and were often forced to work
for no wages.

One government policy

took thousands of
Aboriginal children
(particularly those with
non-Aboriginal fathers)
away from their
mothers. The
government believed
that if the children
were brought up away
from their families they
would fit into white
society more
successfully.

40
 Fighting Back

Modern-day Aborigines from the Walpiri group in the Tanimi Desert.

The shaded areas on the map show land owned
Aboriginal People Today by Aborigines (1988).

There are now more than 700,000 Aborigines and Torres Gaining Rights
Strait Islanders in Australia. They mostly live in country Aborigines have been campaigning for
legal and social rights since the 1930s.
towns or cities. They still have to cope with the problems After the Second World War, Aboriginal
brought about by the loss of their lands and being forced cattle workers in northern Australia
to live in a white society. Many Aborigines live in poverty, went on strike to demand better
with limited access to health care and schools. Aboriginal conditions, but they were not paid the
same as white workers until 1965. In
communities have many more unemployed people, child 1967, Australians voted to give
deaths and people in prison than white communities. Aborigines full citizenship. Since then,
Aborigines also have to fight against the racism of some Aborigines have continued to fight for
the right to govern themselves. They
white Australians. In 1988, Aborigines protested against have set up their own health, legal and
200 years of white invasion. By the early part of the 21st housing services, and government
century, their future is more secure than it has been since spending on Aborigines has increased.
1788 because they are gradually getting more rights to Aborigines have demanded land
rights—the right to control their old
health care and education. Aboriginal people are becoming lands—for many years. In the 1970s and
involved in many more areas of the Australian economy 1980s, new laws gave some Aborigines
and white Australians are learning more about Aboriginal some control of their lands and sacred
sites.
culture. In 2008, the Australian government
issued an official nationwide “apology”
to Aboriginal people for the many years
of harm government policies had caused.
Then, in 2010, Australian Prime Minister
Julia Gilliard announced plans to
recognize Indigenous Australians in the
Constitution; through 2015, however,
the plan had not been put into effect.

Family ties are of great importance for today’s

Aborigines.

41
 7 Modern Australia
Journeys to a New Land
Recent Explorers
In the 1940s, 98 percent of Australia’s
seven million people were originally
British. But Britain could no longer
supply enough new immigrants for
Australia, so immigrants were taken
from other European countries. Many
of these people had lost their homes
during the war in Europe and wanted
to start a new life. Some of these people
Australians volunteered to fight for Britain in World War I. More than 60,000 were able to pay their own fares, but
men were killed. This painting by George Lambert shows Australian troops at
Gallipoli in April 1915. the Australian government helped
others. In return, ‘assisted’ immigrants
A part from the Aborigines, all Australians traveled to
Australia in recent history from other places. In the first
half of the twentieth century, Australia was often described
agreed to work for the government for
two years.
Between 1947 and 1971, almost
as the continent with ‘the most room for more people’. In
three million people traveled to
the 1920s there were ambitious plans for 50 or 100 million
Australia from Britain, the Netherlands,
more immigrants to fill the empty spaces in Australia’s
Germany, Italy, Greece, the Middle
center. After the Second World War (1939-45) immigration
East and other countries. In 1973, the
to Australia from countries other than Britain increased on
White Australia Policy was replaced
a massive scale and transformed Australia completely.
with a policy that did not discriminate
against immigrants on racial grounds.
Immigration from Southeast Asia
A ship bringing immigrants to Australia in the
early 1900s.
 Modern Australia

A Multicultural Society By the year 2030, it is

estimated that one-third
At first, immigrants from non-British of Australia’s population
will be of Asian origin.
backgrounds were expected to blend This photograph (left)
into Australian society. They were not shows Chinatown in the
encouraged to speak their own city of Melbourne.

languages or keep their customs. They

were also seen as a cheap labor force
to do the jobs Australians wouldn’t
do. But these immigrant communities
increased dramatically in the 1970s, soon set up their own organizations,
with refugees coming from Cambodia, schools and newspapers and began to
Laos and Vietnam. Thousands of demand special services from the
Vietnamese refugees traveled more government. During the 1970s, the
than 7,000 miles (11,000 km) from government introduced a policy of
Asia in small, flimsy boats to Australia’s multiculturism. The government now
northern coasts. Today, about a quarter recognizes and supports different
of all Australians were born overseas cultures, rather than trying to make
in more than 100 different countries. everyone behave in the same way.
Although immigrants are still coming Modern-day Australia is an exciting Modern-day Sydney
to Australia, the rate of immigration is mixture of different cultures, where is a city of skyscrapers.
now strictly controlled. people of many different origins live The Olympic Games
were held here in the
together without much tension. year 2000.

43
Modern Australia

Australia Today
I n 1956 Australia hosted the Olympics in
Melbourne. Since then much has changed
in the attitudes and outlook of its people. In
1956, Australia still looked to Great Britain as
the overseas country with which it had the
closest ties. Australia has now strengthened
links with its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific
Rim and the United States. Its greatest
trading partner is Japan, while for defense it
One of the solar- is tied to the USA. The hugely successful 2000
powered vehicles in
Australia’s solar race.
Olympics held in Sydney saw Australia as a confident,
multi-ethnic nation enriched by the culture of
immigrants from southern Europe and Southeast Asia.

Making its Mark on the World

Developments in communication—high-speed air
travel, telephones, television and the Internet—mean
Australia is no longer isolated from the rest of the world The monorail in
Sydney is a great tourist
by its distance. A country which once relied on imports attraction.
for its films and pop music now exports them
along with wine and TV soap operas.
Australia’s spectacular landscapes,
wildlife and its pioneering heritage have
resulted in a hugely profitable tourist industry,
attracting surfers, skiers and back-packers.

Future Challenges
“The lucky country” has, however, also had to
Bushfires remain a face up to problems from its past. Australia
danger to Australia’s
wildlife and people. grew rich on its natural wealth in minerals
and land. Environmental damage caused by mining,
Tourists start to climb
over-farming and over-use of chemicals not only Uluru.
endangers future prosperity but the country’s unique
animal and plant life. The ill-teatment of Aborigines,
whose land, and even whose children, were taken from
them is being redressed. Resistance to asylum-seekers
has caused controversy at home and abroad.
Like most of the world, Australia faces future
worries about the economy in general, but its young
Melbourne is famous
for its trams. and vibrant population should see it through well.

44
 Modern Australia

A map of modern
Australia, showing state
boundaries and major
cities. Canberra is the
capital of Australia.

The Native Title Act

In 1992, the High Court in Australia declared that Australia
was not legally terra nullius or unoccupied before the British
invaded. This judgement (called the Mabo Judgement)
recognized that Aboriginal people should have the right to own
their lands if they can prove that they have a long-term link
with their land—such as living there over a long period of time
or being connected to it through their religion.
In 1993 the Australian government passed the Native Title
Act. This act attempts to listen to the claims of miners, farmers
and Aborigines on land. The act will also give compensation to
those Aborigines who were driven from their lands by white
settlers. Aboriginal people can now take their land claims to an
Australian court, and if their claim is successful the government
will help them to buy the land back.

45
 Australia Timeline
c.50,000 bce People from Asia, the ancestors of modern Aborigines, migrate to Australia.
c.20,000 Evidence that Aborigines are controlling their environment through fire-stick farming.
c. 12,000 Tasmania separates from the Australian mainland.
c.8000 Papua New Guinea separates from the Australian mainland.
c.l ce Population expansion and increase in semi-arid areas throughout Australia.
There are no written records of Aboriginal history during this period. The oral
histories of the Aboriginal peoples and archaeological finds tell us that Aboriginal
groups created new tools, created social and political organizations and set up
trading routes during this time.
1606 William Jansz in the Duyfken is the first recorded European to land in Australia.
c.l700 Trepang fishermen from Macassar regularly visit north Australian coast.
1770 Captain James Cook claims eastern half of Australia as a British possession.
1788 First Fleet of convicts arrives at Sydney.
1851 Gold found. Gold rushes begin in New South Wales and Victoria.
1901 Federation of colonies into one nation. White Australia Policy passed.
1914-18 World War I.
1939-45 World War 11.
1967 A referendum gives Aborigines full citizenship rights.
1988 Auastralia celebrates the bicentenary of its discovery by Captain Cook.
1993 Native Title Act grants Aborigines compensation for loss of land rights.
1997 Australian tourism and exports hit by Asian financial crisis.
2000 Sydney hosts Olympic Games.
2001 New South Wales hit by major bush fires.
2002 Terrorists attack night clubs in Bali, where many Australians died.
2008 Australian government officially apologizes for its long mistreatment of Aborigines.
2009 Horrific bushfires rage throughout Victoria; becomes the deadliest natural
disaster in Australian history.
2011 Floods in Queensland are called the most expensive disaster in the nation’s history.
2014 Two people die when an Islamic terrorist takes hostages at a Sydney restaurant.
2014 To stem arrivals of refugees from Indonesia, Australian Navy starts stopping boats and
sending them back.
2015 Malcolm Turnbull becomes prime minister, replacing Tony Abbott, who served less
than two years.

46
 Glossary
A G naturalist: someone who studies botany
Admiralty: the name of the organization glacier: a huge river of ice that moves and/or zoology (the study of animals),
that runs the navy of a country. slowly through a landscape carving a navigator: someone who can plot a
ancestral spirit beings: in Aboriginal path for itself as it advances. course—this means that they can guide
religions these are the beings who created Great Australian Bight: a huge ‘dent’ a ship or a plane from one place
the world and all life in the world, in the coast of West and South Australia to another.
anthropologist: someone who studies along the southern half of the Australian
all aspects of human beings, continent. This dent is over 700 miles P
archaeological: anything that is related (1,100 km) long and is famous for storms. penal colony: a colony of convicts
to ancient sites and artefacts. guerrilla warfare: a war fought prehistorians: people who try to
by soldiers who do not belong to an investigate the history of human beings
B official, national army. Guerrillas use and animals before there were written
baler: the name of a large, open shell different fighting tactics from official records.
that is found in the Pacific Ocean, armies, usually involving ambushes and Prussian: someone from Prussia, a state
botanist: someone who studies plants. sabotage. which began in north and central
Germany and stretched to France, the
C I Netherlands, the Baltic Sea and Poland.
circumnavigate: to travel completely Ice Age: a time when the Earth was Prussia belonged to Germany.
around the world. covered in ice and glaciers. There have Ptolemy: a Greek astronomer,
colonies: lands that are taken over by been several Ice Ages. The first Ice Age geographer and mathematician of the
the government and people of another took place millions of years ago. second century ce.
country. ice cap: an area of permanent ice that is
conservation: the protection of people, usually found on the top of a mountain or R
animals, plants or places, a piece of land. rituals: a series of actions (usually
convict: someone found guilty of a immigrant: a person who moves to live associated with religion) of special
crime and imprisoned. in a country different from their place of significance to those who perform them.
birth. Royal Society: a society of scientists
D immunity: the name given to our bodies’ founded in Great Britain in 1660 to
dialects: a variation of a language ability to resist diseases and illness, such encourage interest and research in the
spoken by people in one particular as the common cold and flu. world of science.
place. indigenous: people, plants or animals
dugongs: the name of mammals who S
that live and grow naturally in a certain
live in the sea and are sometimes called semi-traditional lifestyle: one that
part of the world.
sea- cows. Dugongs feed on plants, can includes both traditional and modern
grow up to three metres long and can L ways of living.
weigh up to 1,200 pounds (550 kg). legal: anything to do with law. shearing: cutting off the coat of a sheep
Dutch East India Company: a Dutch with clippers.
company formed in the sixteenth century M sociologist: someone who studies human
to trade with the East Indies. massacre: the murder of large numbers societies.
of people. spiritual significance: the importance
E marsupial: a type of mammal whose given to a person, place or object by a
export: to sell and transport goods, such babies grow up in a pouch on the outside religion.
as food and raw materials, from one of the mother’s body. survey: to study land in detail.
country to another. Ming Dynasty: the Ming family ruled
extinct: something that no longer China from 1368 to 1644. This series of T
exists. rulers is called a dynasty. tributaries: a stream or river that joins a
mission stations: places set up by larger one.
F missionaries to sell food and provisions
federal: the name of a type of government. to people and to teach religion. Mission W
A federal government is a large central World Heritage Sites: sites recognized
stations are often in remote places,
government which also allows smaller by an international organization as
missionaries: people who try to convert
district or state governments power, having an environment that is unique in
people from one religion to another.
fertile: soil that allows plants to grow in the world and which therefore should be
it very easily because it is moist and full of N protected.
minerals for the plants to feed on. natural science: the name given to any of
fibers: very thin threads of material or Y
the sciences concerned with the natural
plant which can be spun with other fibres world. yams: a tropical plant, the root of which is
to make rope or cloth. eaten like a vegetable.

47
 Index immunity 39, 47
indigenous people 11, 47
Stizelecki, Paul Edmund 35
Stuart, John McDouall 33,
Photographic credits
Numbers in bold indicate Inland Sea, search for 32 35
Sturt, Charles 32 Cover: Main: Mariongib/Dreamstime; Art: Joanna Zh/Dream-
an illustration. Words in
Janz, William 18 stime; Musician: Liverbird/DT.
bold are in the glossary on surveys 24, 47
Interior: Allsport UK Ltd 44 top left; Ancient Art & Architec-
page 37. kangaroos 11 ture
tamarind seeds 25
Collection 6 middle; Art Gallery of South Australia/
Aborigines 3, 6-7, 12-17, 22, land rights, aboriginal 41 Tasman, Abel 19, 21
Aboriginal Artists Agency 17 left; Australian High
35, 38, 40-41 legal agreements 16, 47 Tasmania 9 Commission, London 2, 13 bottom, 27 bottom, 37 top and
Tasmanian 14, 39 Leichhardt, Ludwig 35 Tasmanian Aborigines 14, bottom, 39 top left, 42 bottom; Bridgeman Art Library
Admiralty, British 22, 47 39 7 left Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 22 bottom National
air transport 37 Macassans 25 time chart 46 Maritime Museum, 24 top Alecto Historical Editions/British
ancestral spirit beings 7, Mahogany Ship mystery 20 tools Aboriginal 13 Museum, 25 bottom Royal Geographical Society, 38 top,
47 marsupials 9, 11, 47 Torres, Luis Vaez de 20 39 top right; Bruce Coleman Ltd cover foreground, 3, 6
anthropologists 44, 47 massacres 38, 47 Torres Strait Islanders 11, 41 bottom, 9, 11 top left and bottom left, 15 top right, 17 right,
archaeological evidence 6, Melanesian workers 31 tourism 44 25 top, 44 bottom right; Mary Evans Picture Library 20,
47 Ming Dynasty 18, 47 29 bottom, 31 right, 33, 36 top; E.T. Archive 14 top Queen
trade routes 16-17
Victoria Museum, 18 top British Library and bottom, 19
mission stations 40, 47 traps, animal 13, 14
baler shell trade 16, 17, 47 right, 21 top, and bottom National Library of Australia, 22
missionaries 40, 47 trepang 25
Banks, Joseph 24 top, 23 left National Maritime Museum, 26 bottom National
multiculturalism 43 tributaries 36, 47 Library of Australia, 27 top, 28, 29 top National Library of
botanists 24, 47
Murray River 36 Australia, 33 bottom, 36 bottom, 38 bottom, 39 bottom,
British exploration 22-24 Uluru (Ayers Rock) 2, 4, 6
Burke, Robert O’Hara 34, 35 42 top Australian War Memorial; Chris Fairclough Color
Native Title Act 45 Library 37 middle, 41 bottom; Robert Harding Picture
natural science 24, 47 weapons, Aboriginal 13, 14
Chinese workers 30, 31 Library 10, 11 bottom right, 15 top left, 24 bottom Royal
naturalists 35, 47 Wills, John 34 Society, London; Hulton Deutsch Collection 12 bottom,
Chisholm, Caroline 27
naughty spirit beings 7 witchetty grubs 12 13 top, 14 bottom, 23 right; Laver Collection, State Library
circumnavigation 24, 47
navigators 18, 47 wombats 11 of the Northern Territory 40 bottom; Mansell Collection 19
colonies 18, 26, 47
World Heritage Sites 44, 47 left, 24 middle, 27 middle, 34 top, 35 left; Mirror
conservation 44, 47 ochre 17 Syndication International 32 left National Library of
convicts 24, 26-27, 47 Overland Telegraph Line 36, yams 13, 47 Australia; Mitchell Library, State Library of New South
Cook, Captain James 22, 23 37 Wales 30 bottom; Andrew Oliver title page, 31 left, 43, 44
Dampier, William 23 top right and bottom left; John Oxley Library, State Library
Papua New Guinea 9, 11 of Queensland 35 right; Royal Geographical Society 11 top
dialects 13, 47
Pemulwy 39 right, 12 topj Miles, 15 bottom J Miles, 30 top, 41 top
Dieppe maps 20
penal colonies 26, 47 J Miles, 44 middle left; Tony Stone Images cover
Dieri people 17 background, 6 top; Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery
pituri trade 17
disease 39 40 top; University of Melbourne Museum of Art back
Portuguese exploration 19,
Dreamtime 6, 7, 15 cover; Zefa Picture Library 7 right.
20
drovers 28
praus 25
dugongs 14, 47
prehistorians 8, 47
Dutch East India Company
Protection Acts 40
21, 47
Prussian explorer 35, 47
Dutch traders 18, 21
Ptolemy 18, 47
Endeavour 22 Quiros, Pedro Fernandez de
energy exploration 44 20
exports 25, 47
Eyre, Edward John 32, 33 radiocarbon dating 9
rail transport 36
federal government 30, 47 religious duties, Aboriginal
fertile land 13, 47 15
fibers 13, 47 Resolution 22, 23
fire-stick farmers 13 rituals 7, 47
Flinders, Matthew 24 road transport 36
Flying Doctor Service 37 Robinson, George Augustus
39, 40
Geelong keys 20
rock art 6, 15
glaciers 10, 47
Royal Society 24, 47
gold mining 29, 30, 31
Gondwanaland 8 selectors 28
Great Australian Bight 32, shearing 29, 47
47 Simpson Desert 10
Great Barrier Reef 11 Smith, Charles Kingford 37
Guerrilla warfare 38, 47 sociologists 44, 47
solar power 44
Hartog, Dirck 18
spiritual significance,
Ice Age 10, 47 places of 7, 47
ice caps 9, 10, 47 squatters 28
immigrants 5, 27, 42-43, starvation 39
47 stock routes 28

48