HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

About 50 million years ago, as dinosaurs were disappearing from Earth, Australia was formed when a piece of land broke away from Gondwanaland, the large land mass that included Africa, South America and India. Today, huge parts of the Australian landscape show movements in the Earth that occurred more than 1,000 million years ago. In the central plateau, which covers half of the continent and includes the Kimberly and Hamersley ranges, the Great Sandy, Great Victoria and Gibson Deserts, rocks with the embedded remains of organisms dating back 3,500 million years, have been found. Some of man’s oldest tools, a dinosaur’s footprint, and evidence of coral reefs in a sea where landlocked ocean fish have adapted to fresh water, have also been discovered. The world’s only egg-laying mammals, the platypus and echidna and over 120 different species of marsupials (the red kangaroo, koala and tiny desert mice) are synonymous with Australia and have developed in extraordinary ways in this isolated, unique land.

As long ago as 8,000 BC, Aboriginal hunters, who understood intimately the vagaries of the land and climate, invented the returning boomerang to kill the creatures they stalked. Sometimes they patiently tracked their prey for days while the women fished and gathered food. Clans of ten to 50 maintained nature’s balance and took only what was needed to feed themselves. Practising conservation in this way, they ensured there was always adequate food for their people. The term ‘Dreamtime’ embraces the Aboriginal cultural heritage and defines traditional thought and practice. Spirits and legends as depicted in rock drawings, paintings, dances and songs, describe the close link between the land and its people. As with other indigenous groups, to take land from an Aborigine is to take his life, both spiritually and literally. In the 1770s the estimated Aboriginal population was more than three hundred thousand. The first settlers regarded the 500 different and complex Aboriginal languages as ‘babble’ and as a consequence only 30 dialects are spoken today. A culture that was 50,000 years old was ill-prepared for the white man’s arrival, the subsequent land grabbing and the onslaught of savagery and foreign diseases.

In 1290, Marco Polo speculated about a land rich in gold and shells, lying south of Java, as did the Greeks, Arabs, and Portuguese, whose maps recorded that they were familiar with the eastern half of Australia. The Portuguese explorer, Queiros, named the island of Vanuatu, ‘Australia del Espiritu Santo’, mistakenly thinking it was the Australian continent. It is possible that Chinese sandalwood cutters from Timor arrived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in support of that theory, a small statuette from the Ming Dynasty was unearthed in Darwin in 1879.

A Dutchman, Willem Janz, made Australia’s first known landing in 1606 and Abel Tasman followed in 1642 with a sighting of the west coast of Tasmania, which he called ‘Van Dieman’s Land’ or ‘New Holland’.

William Dampier, while looking for new trade routes to the Pacific, was the first Englishman to set foot on the continent in 1688. Then, Captain James Cook anchored in Botany Bay for a week on 28 April 1770. Later, sailing north, Cook hoisted the British flag on Possession Island on 22 August, naming the eastern side of the continent ‘New South Wales’. Originally sent by the Royal Society to observe the transit of Venus, Cook and his naturalist, Joseph Banks, thrilled English society with drawings and tales of the strange animals, plants and ‘noble savages’ found on this new land.

After their losses in the American War of Independence, the British needed another place to send the unwanted dregs of society – drunks, petty thieves and criminals. And on 26 January 1788 the first fleet of eleven ships carrying 1,000 passengers – three-quarters of them convicts – arrived at Port Jackson and raised the British flag to proclaim the new nation. The Sydney Opera House now overlooks this cove. A second coastal penal settlement was established in Tasmania in 1825. From the first colony, exploration and settlement spread. At the same time, the British Government was giving away free land in order to encourage people to move away from the overcrowded shores of Britain to an apparently empty land in Australia.

Between 1840 and 1869 the transportation of convicts gradually stopped, and in 1860 the continent was divided into five separate colonies. Tensions increased between Europeans and Aborigines, squatters (rich officers and free – not convict – settlers who ‘squatted’ or laid claim to large tracts of land for merino sheep stations), and farmers (Australian-born or free settlers), often creating a hostile environment. The new arrivals, claiming possession of land that they assumed was uninhabited, were not welcomed by Aborigines. Settlers started to greatly outnumber the convict population, and settlements spread to South Australia in 1837. Victoria sprang up in 1851, Queensland in 1859, and the Swan River Colony, which had been established in 1827, became self-governing in 1890. The Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901 through the proclamation of the Constitution for the Federation of Six States. The original fathers at the forefront of this new nation, wanting to avoid the pitfalls of their homelands, had progressive ideas about the rights of man, democratic procedures and the value of a secret ballot. Since 1901, the constitutional ties with Britain have slowly loosened.

EUREKA! GOLD. . .

Much of Australia is a plateau, bounded by four seas and three oceans, with an average elevation of three hundred and thirty metres, the lowest of the world’s continents. Early exploration of Australia progressed slowly because of the inhospitable terrain and climate of the large continent. The barrier of the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney and the difficult nature of the Australian bush were other reasons for the slow pace of development.

The discovery of gold at Bathurst, by Edward Hargraves in May 1851, put Australia firmly on the map. Eager prospectors worldwide and from other colonies, such as Victoria, where the population rapidly declined, rushed to Bathurst. This was the first of many subsequent gold finds which attracted a flood of migrants to the Australian shores. Miners, who came initially for gold, remained as settlers and contributed their skills to the new land. This rapid economic growth made it possible for Australia to become relatively independent of Britain.

Irish immigrants or runaway convicts, often those of strong Republican sentiments who rebelled against Protestant landlords and those in authority, usually the British, were known as ‘bush-rangers’. Ned Kelly was one of these outlaws who, even though he killed three policemen, is today part of Australian folklore. Wimbledon tennis champion Pat Cash’s ancestor was another renowned colonial highwayman, and the restaurant chain Cobb and Co. is named after the stagecoaches that carried gold or lone travellers, ‘rich pickings’ for opportunistic robbers.

PEACE, PROSPERITY AND CHANGE IN THE 1900s

By 1880, Australia’s population was two million, increasing to six million by the end of the First World War. The number of Australians employed in the manufacturing industry increased steadily after the 1900s and many women who had worked in traditional men’s jobs during the war continued to work during peacetime.

The establishment of a capital city for the country became a priority. Sydney and Melbourne bitterly contested the right to be the designated capital. The Government compromised in 1913 by naming Canberra, a new Territory on the Monaro Tablelands, which lay between the two cities, as head of the nation.

The output of primary industries, such as wheat and wool, continued to grow, although the percentage of rural sector workers started to decline. After the Second World War, European immigration was encouraged and the nation enjoyed a boom period of rapid industrialisation. In 1948, with American finance and migrant labour, Australia’s first car manufacturing plant, General Motors, started producing the Holden saloon.

The economy developed strongly in the 1950s, with the opening up of mining resources and major nation-building projects such as the huge hydroelectricity generator project in the Snowy Mountains. A prosperous society meant that everyone benefited, suburban property ownership increased and the Government consolidated its political stability.

The influx of immigrants between 1945 and 1965 increased the population from seven million to eleven million and dramatically changed the cultural, culinary and psychological face of Australia. During this period of rapid population growth, the Australian Government tried to prevent the immigration of Asian and Pacific Islander people by passing the Immigration Restriction Bill, more commonly known as the ‘White Australian Policy’. This Bill was later revoked. Until recently, Australian immigration policies encouraged British applications for permanent residency and citizenship and, as a consequence, most of the United Kingdom’s population seems to have at least one relative living in Australia.

In the 60s, as with the rest of the Western world, Australia’s society changed because of increasing ethnic diversity, Britain’s declining influence as a world power and the increasing domination of the United States, especially during the Vietnam War. The growth of the ‘Baby Boomers’ impacted the nation’s focus, causing significant economic, political and social change.

The long post-war domination of the national political scene by the National Party finished in 1972 when the Labor Party was elected to power. The following three years saw subsequent reforms and major legislative changes in education, health, social security, foreign affairs and industrial relations. However, in 1975 a constitutional crisis resulted in the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, being dismissed by the Governor General and the subsequent defeat of the Labor Party in the following election. The National Party dominated the political scene until 1983 when Labor returned to office. The previous Coalition Government, led by John Howard, was defeated late in 2007 by Kevin Rudd leading the Labor Party. The Labor Party is the opposition. Other mainstream political parties are the Australian Democrats, the Australian Greens, a rising political force, and a Christian party, Family First.