MacArthur, Phillip and Bligh have greatly influenced the course of Australia's history, and they are among nine Australian icons to have received a numismatic tribute as part of the People Who Shaped Australia Enamel Penny 9-Coin Set. They're joined by other Australians with similarly impressive stories to tell.
The selection of colonial figures comprised Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales; the navigators, Matthew Flinders and Sir John Franklin; and the inland explorers, Charles Sturt and Hamilton Hume.
British settlement of Australia began as a penal colony governed by a captain of the Royal Navy. Until the 1850s, when local forces began to be recruited, British regular troops garrisoned the colonies with little local assistance.
On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was in 1606 by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon on Australia's northern coast. Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, what is now called Torres Strait and associated islands.
After Janszoon many Dutch explorers sailed along the northern, western and southern coastline. 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.
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.
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.
Edward Kelly, hanged in Melbourne gaol on November 11th, 1880, came at the end of a long tradition of Australian bushrangers who attained the status of folk hero. But he was the only one who transcended such localised fame to become Australia's sole national hero.
Australia is known for many things, including swathes of tropical beaches, marine reserves, Aboriginal culture, cute koalas, rolling wine country, and lush rainforests.
Australians traditionally had a national identity that developed during the 19th and early 20th century that was complemented by a British identity to form a larger identity. 2. The 'end of empire' disrupted the British identity and created a vacuum in the wider Australian identity.
The culture of Australia is primarily a Western culture, originally derived from Britain but also influenced by the unique geography of Australia and the cultural input of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and other Australian people.
Gold Rush. The discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 revolutionised Australia as an influx of migrants arrived, and the wealth of the nation increased dramatically. At its peak, two tonnes of gold poured into Melbourne's Treasury Building each week.
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.
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.
Aboriginal peoples
Genetic studies appear to support an arrival date of 50–70,000 years ago. The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia (and outside of Africa) are those of Mungo Man; they have been dated at 42,000 years old.
A coastal town located on the east bank of the mouth of the Tamar River, George Town is Australia's third oldest European settlement and Australia's oldest town.
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.
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.
The theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia claims that early Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to sight Australia between 1521 and 1524, well before the arrival of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606 on board the Duyfken who is generally considered to be the first European discoverer.
Aboriginal Land
From at least 60,000 B.C. the area that was to become New South Wales was inhabited entirely by indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with traditional social, legal organisation and land rights.
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.