The name Australia (pronounced /əˈstreɪliə/ in Australian English) is derived from the Latin Terra Australis (“southern land”), a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.
Establishment of the colony: 1788 to 1792. The territory of New South Wales claimed by Britain included all of Australia eastward of the meridian of 135° East.
The first recorded use of the word Australia was by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós in 1606. The Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman charted the coast in 1644 and called the place New Holland. The name New Holland was in common usage for the southern land until the mid-1850s.
To put it simply, Antarctica used to be called Australia. Then, in 1824, today's Australia took the name, leaving the icy continent essentially without a 'proper' name until the 1890s.
Australia and much of Gondwana was in the grip of a major ice age, that took hold in the Late Carboniferous and extended well into the Permian as ice sheets advanced and retreated several times across the great southern landmass.
The breakup of Gondwana occurred in stages. Some 180 million years ago, in the Jurassic Period, the western half of Gondwana (Africa and South America) separated from the eastern half (Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica).
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated. The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the idea that Aboriginal people were the first Australians.
The song's lyrics famously refer to Australia as “the land down under where women glow, and men plunder.” Today, people know Australia for its unique wildlife, stunning landscapes, and vibrant cities. Its nickname, “The Land Down Under”, continues to capture the imagination of people all over the world.
Australian English arose from a dialectal melting pot created by the intermingling of early settlers who were from a variety of dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, though its most significant influences were the dialects of Southeast England.
Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers. The tallies of the dead are not the only measure of what took place, according to Dr Bill Pascoe, a digital humanities specialist and key researcher on the project. “We are always using conservative estimates,” Pascoe said.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
Most of the explorers of this period concluded that the apparent lack of water and fertile soil made the region unsuitable for colonisation.
Named for Anthony van Diemen, governor general of the Dutch East Indies, the island was first encountered by Europeans in 1642 and named by Abel J. Tasman, a celebrated navigator under van Diemen's command. The first British settlers in the early 19th century retained the name.
Eora is also commonly used for Sydney. For northern Sydney the term Guringai has been used, however, it was originally invented by a researcher in 1892 for this area and there is a Gringai clan in the Barrington River, Glouchester area who are requesting Sydneysiders to stop using their name.
Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under" (usually shortened to just "Down Under"). Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", and "the Wide Brown Land".
There are also a number of terms for Australia, such as: Aussie, Oz, Lucky Country, and land of the long weekend. Names for regions include: dead heart, top end, the mallee, and the mulga.
In 1901, Australia became a nation, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. One year later, Australia became one of the first countries in the world to give women the right to vote. In 1945, Australia became a founding member of the United Nations.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas. Increasingly sophisticated dating methods are helping us gain a more accurate understanding of how people came to be in Australia.
There were between 300,000 to 950,000 Aboriginal people living in Australia when the British arrived in 1788.3 At that time there were approximately 260 distinct language groups and 500 dialects. Land is fundamental to Indigenous people, both individually and collectively.
Records show that about 18 Chinese settlers had immigrated to Australia before 1848. The earliest known Chinese immigrant to arrive in Sydney is reported to have been Mak Sai Ying. Born in Guangzhou (Canton) in 1798, he arrived as a free settler in New South Wales in 1818 and purchased land at Parramatta.
New Zealand separates
Australia and New Zealand have always had a close relationship. But for a few months in 1840–41 our connection was even closer – New Zealand was formally made an extension of the New South Wales colony.
In terms of the middle of India and Australia landmasses, Australia is moving northward at 3 cm (1.2 in) per year with respect to India. This differential movement has resulted in the compression of the former plate near its centre at Sumatra and the division into the separate Indian and Australian Plates again.