The first settlement, at Sydney, consisted of about 850 convicts and their Marine guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay in the "First Fleet" of 9 transport ships accompanied by 2 small warships, in January, 1788.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Australia Day is the official national day of Australia. Observed annually on 26 January, it marks the 1788 landing of the First Fleet, and raising of the Union Flag by Arthur Phillip, at Sydney Cove in New South Wales.
Food. In the first years of the New South Wales colony, food was so scarce that everyone—from the convicts to Governor Arthur Phillip—received rations. That means that each person received measured amounts of foods, such as pork, flour, and rice, which were brought to the colony by ship.
Molecular clock estimates, genetic studies and archaeological data all suggest the initial colonisation of Sahul and Australia by modern humans occurred around 48,000–50,000 years ago. Over the last few decades, a significant number of archaeological sites dated at more than 30,000 years old have been discovered.
The Dutch first sighted Australia in 1606 before Captain Cook colonised the land for Great Britain in 1770. The First Fleet of 11 boats arrived at Botany Bay in 1788 to establish New South Wales as a penal colony (receiving convicts until 1848).
James Cook was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer, he reached the south-eastern coast of Australia on 19 April 1770, his expedition became the first recorded Europeans to have encountered Australia's eastern coastline.
The majority of European Australians are of British Isles – English, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh – ancestral origin. While not an official ancestral classification, they are often referred to as Anglo-Celtic Australians.
After European settlers arrived in 1788, thousand of aborigines died from diseases; colonists systematically killed many others. At first contact, there were over 250,000 aborigines in Australia. The massacres ended in the 1920 leaving no more than 60,000.
For more than 50,000 years before European arrival, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples lived as hunter-gatherers. With no signs of land ownership, such as fences, crops, stock animals, or buildings, the Europeans who arrived on the First Fleet believed the land was free to claim.
Official records state at least 40 men, women and children were killed, but other historians suggest hundreds of Aboriginal people died that day. Today, the site of the killings bears no obvious evidence of the murders.
Australia was a collection of British colonies from 1788 until 1901. The first colonies were established as places where criminals were sent to live and work. These were known as convict settlements or penal colonies. Later, colonies were established by free settlers.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
Prior to British settlement, more than 500 First Nations groups inhabited the continent we now call Australia, approximately 750,000 people in total. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures developed over 60,000 years, making First Nations Peoples the custodians of the world's oldest living culture.
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.
It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
As white settlers moved further away from the centre of government, random shootings of Aboriginals and massacres of groups of men, women and children were common. The most infamous massacre in New South Wales occurred at Myall Creek station in 1838.
The original Australians were dark-skinned, but a large proportion of the country's Aborigines today are of mixed blood, and many appear to be white.
The claim that a “Licence To Shoot Aborigines” was distributed in Australia as part of a 1965 pest control law is false. The supposed licence is a fake and can be traced back to a racist propaganda leaflet distributed in the 1990s. Indigenous history experts confirmed no such licence ever existed.
Ninety-five years ago, in March 1928, the first Australian Grand Prix motor car race was held on the Phillip Island road circuit, organised by the Victorian Light Car Club. At that time it was called the 100 Miles Road Race, but some years later it would become known as the first Australian Grand Prix.
Australia's first people—known as Aboriginal Australians—have lived on the continent for over 50,000 years. Today, there are 250 distinct language groups spread throughout Australia.
The First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a penal colony, the first colony on the Australian mainland.
In a book titled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World Gavin Menzies claims that in the 1420's several fleets of Chinese ships sailed around the world, making contact with many countries before Europeans explored them, including Australia.
James Cook was the first recorded explorer to land on the east coast in 1770. He had with him maps showing the north, west and south coasts based on the earlier Dutch exploration.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the Indigenous peoples of Australia. They are not one group, but rather comprise hundreds of groups that have their own distinct set of languages, histories and cultural traditions (AIHW 2015).