History of Australia

The history of Australia is the history of the land and peoples which comprise the Commonwealth of Australia. The modern nation came into existence on 1 January 1901 as a federation of former British colonies, founded on the discoveries of Captain Cook and other European explorers. The pre-history of Australia, however, commences with the arrival of the first ancestors of Aboriginal Australians by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and continues to the present day.

Quotes

19th century

• Population and wealth will flow in upon us in copious, rapid and continuous streams ... A high and noble destiny awaits the long despised Australia, and she must now be treated by her haughty mistress, not as a child, but as an equal. In every point a great change must be, or Australia will know how to vindicate her rights.
  • The People’s Advocate (23 July 1851); reported in Bill Beach, Bill Peach’s Gold (Melbourne, 1983), p. 43

• Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is also so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies; and all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises and adventures, the incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.
  • Mark Twain (1897); reported in Peter FitzSimons, Batavia (2011), epigraph

External links

• Encyclopedic article on History of Australia on Wikipedia