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Main articles: Prehistory of Australia and Indigenous Australians
Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley region of Western Australia
Human habitation of the Australian continent is known to have begun about 65,000 years ago,[21][46][47] with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia.[48] The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is recognised as the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia.[49] The oldest human remains found are the Lake Mungo remains, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago.[50][51] These people were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians.[52] Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual cultures on Earth.[53]
At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies.[54][55] Recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained.[56][57] Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime.[58] The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas.[59] The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically for trade by Makassan fishermen from what is now Indonesia.[60]
Main articles: European maritime exploration of Australia, European land exploration of Australia, and History of Australia (1788–1850)
Landing of James Cook at Botany Bay on 29 April 1770 to claim Australia's eastern half for Great Britain
The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch.[61] The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon.[62] He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February 1606 at the Pennefather River near the modern town of Weipa on Cape York.[63] Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through and navigated the Torres Strait Islands.[64] The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent "New Holland" during the 17th century, and although no attempt at settlement was made,[63] a number of shipwrecks left men either stranded or, as in the case of the Batavia in 1629, marooned for mutiny and murder, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the continent.[65] In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named "New South Wales" and claimed for Great Britain.[66]
Following the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the First Fleet, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the Union flag raised at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788,[67][68] a date which later became Australia's national day. Most early convicts were transported for petty crimes and assigned as labourers or servants to "free settlers" (non-convict immigrants). While the majority of convicts settled into colonial society once emancipated, convict rebellions and uprisings were also staged, but invariably suppressed under martial law. The 1808 Rum Rebellion, the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia, instigated a two-year period of military rule.[69] The following decade, social and economic reforms initiated by Governor Lachlan Macquarie saw New South Wales transition from a penal colony to a civil society.[70][71]
The indigenous population declined for 150 years following settlement, mainly due to infectious disease.[72] Thousands more died as a result of frontier conflict with settlers.[73] A government policy of "assimilation" beginning with the Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 resulted in the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families and communities (referred to as the Stolen Generations), a practice which also contributed to the decline in the indigenous population.[74]
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