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History
Australia's original inhabitants, known as Australian
Aborigines, have the longest continuous cultural
history in the world, with origins dating back
to the last Ice Age. Although mystery and debate
shroud many aspects of Australian prehistory,
it is generally accepted that the first humans
travelled across the sea from Indonesia about
70,000 years ago. The first visitors, called 'Robust'
by archaeologists because of their heavy-boned
physique, were followed 20,000 years later by
the more slender 'Gracile' people, the ancestors
of Australian Aborigines.
Europeans began to encroach on Australia in the
16th century: Portuguese navigators were followed
by Dutch explorers and the enterprising English
pirate William Dampier. Captain James Cook sailed
the entire length of the eastern coast in 1770,
stopping at Botany Bay on the way. After rounding
Cape York, he claimed the continent for the British
and named it New South Wales.
In 1779, Joseph Banks (a naturalist on Cook's
voyage) suggested that Britain could solve overcrowding
problems in its prisons by transporting convicts
to New South Wales. In 1787, the First Fleet set
sail for Botany Bay under the command of Captain
Arthur Philip, who was to become the colony's
first governor. The fleet comprised 11 ships,
750 male and female convicts, four companies of
marines and supplies for two years. Philip arrived
in Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, but soon moved
north to Sydney Cove, where there was better land
and water. For the new arrivals, New South Wales
was a harsh and horrible place, and the threat
of starvation hung over the colony for at least
16 years.
Australia never experienced the systematic push
westward that characterised the European settlement
of America. Early exploration and expansion took
place for one of three reasons: to find suitable
places of secondary punishment, like the barbaric
penal settlements at Port Arthur in Van Diemen's
Land and on Norfolk Island; to occupy land before
anyone else arrived; or in later years, because
of the quest for gold.
Free settlers began to be attracted to Australia
over the next decades, but it was the discovery
of gold in the 1850s that changed the face of
the colony. The huge influx of migrants and several
large finds boosted the economy and irrevocably
changed the colonial social structures. Aborigines
were ruthlessly pushed off their tribal lands
as new settlers took up land for farming or mining.
The Industrial Revolution in England required
plenty of raw materials, and Australia's agricultural
and mineral resources expanded to meet the demand.
Australia became a nation when federation of
the separate colonies took place on 1 January
1901 (although many of the legal and cultural
ties with England remained). Australian troops
fought alongside the British in the Boer War and
WWI. Interestingly, while Australians rallied
to the aid of Britain during WWI, the majority
of voters were prepared to support voluntary military
service only. Efforts to introduce conscription
during the war led to bitter debate, both in parliament
and in the streets, and in referenda compulsory
national service was rejected.
Australia was hard hit by the Depression; prices
for wool and wheat - two mainstays of the economy
- plunged. In 1931 almost a third of breadwinners
were unemployed and poverty was widespread. Swagmen
became a familiar sight, as they had been in the
1890s depression, as thousands of men took to
the ‘wallaby track' in search of work in
the countryside. By 1933, however, Australia's
economy was starting to recover, a result of rises
in wool prices and a rapid revival of manufacturing.
When WWII broke out, Australian troops fought
alongside the British in Europe but after the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Australia's own
national security finally began to take priority.
Singapore fell, the northern Australian towns
of Darwin and Broome and the New Guinean town
of Port Moresby were bombed, the Japanese advanced
southward. In appalling conditions, Australian
soldiers confronted and defeated the Japanese
at Milne Bay, east of Port Moresby, and began
the long struggle to push them from the Pacific.
Ultimately it was the USA that helped protect
Australia from the Japanese, defeating them in
the Battle of the Coral Sea. This event was to
mark the beginning of a profound shift in Australia's
allegiance away from Britain and towards the USA.
Post WWII immigration brought a flood of European
immigrants, many of them non-British. The immigrants
have since made an enormous contribution to the
country, enlivening its culture and broadening
its vision. The post-war era was a boom time in
Australia as its raw materials were once again
in great demand.
In the 1950s Australia came to accept the American
view that it was not so much Asia but communism
in Asia that threatened the increasingly Americanised
Australian way of life. Accordingly, Australia
followed the USA into the Korean War, and in 1965,
Australia committed troops to assist the USA in
the Vietnam War, though support for involvement
was far from absolute. Still more troubling for
many young Australian men was the fact that conscription
was introduced in 1964, and those undertaking
national service could now be sent overseas. By
1967 as many as 40% of Australians serving in
Vietnam were conscripts.
The civil unrest aroused by conscription was
one factor that contributed to the 1972 rise to
power of the Australian Labor Party, under the
leadership of Gough Whitlam. The Whitlam government
withdrew Australian troops from Vietnam, abolished
national service and higher-education fees, instituted
a system of free and universally available health
care, and supported land rights for Aboriginal
people.
The government, however, was hampered by a hostile
Senate and by much talk of mismanagement. On 11
November 1975, the governor general (the British
monarch's representative in Australia) took the
unprecedented step of dismissing the parliament
and installing a caretaker government led by the
leader of the opposition Liberal Party, Malcolm
Fraser. Labor supporters were appalled - the powers
that the governor general had been able to invoke
had long been regarded by many as an anachronistic
vestige of Australia's now remote British past.
Nevertheless, it was a conservative Liberal and
National Country Party coalition that won the
ensuing election. A Labor government was not returned
until 1983, when a former trade union leader,
Bob Hawke, led the party to victory.
After a period of recession and high unemployment
in the early 1990s, the electorate eventually
lost faith in the Labor government, and in early
1996, Labor leader Paul Keating was defeated in
a landslide victory to the conservative coalition,
led by John Howard.
The issue of republicanism - replacing Britain's
queen with an Australian president as head of
state - dominated Australian politics in the late
1990s. An increasing number of people, particularly
young Australians, felt that constitutional ties
with Britain were no longer relevant and the only
way forward was to declare Australia a republic.
However, a national referendum in 1999 resulted
in a comprehensive victory for the status quo.
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