2. Diescoveres and explorers

The first people to occupy the Australian continent were the Aborigines, who arrived in Australia at least 50,000 years ago. Those people used tools and weapons made of wood and stone. They were a nomadic people, who lived hunting and gathering food from the land as they traveled from place to place. But the Aborigines were not simply passive users of the environment. Their movement and diet were controlled by the seasons and by the type of country in which they lived. They also modified it to ensure food supplies. They burned vegetation to encourage the growth of plants either for eating or to attract animals.

After the arrival of the Aborigines and before the arrival of the Europeans, several other cultures probably touched Australia’s the Chinese knew of the continent. Fishing boats from Maccasar (now part of Indonesia) frequently visited the north coast. In 1879 a small Ming Dynasty statuette was unearthed in Darwin. The visitors influenced Aboriginal culture and introduced iron blades, spears and knives to the area.

European Discoverers

The first recorded Europeans to see Australia were the Dutch in 1606. Over the next 150 years the shape of the continent gradually emerged on European maps. But knowledge of the coastline was imperfect. For example, when the British decided to establish a settlement at Botany Bay in the 1780s, maps still showed the island of Tasmania linked to the mainland.

The Europeans had long believed in the existence of a great south land that they named Terra Australis Incognita (Unknown Southland). The first Europeans in the region to the north of Australia were the Portuguese and Spaniards in the 1500s. The historians claim that the east coast of Australia was explored by the Portuguese. The Dieppe maps, produced in France during the 1540s, were based on maps stolen from the Portuguese. They show a large land mass to the south of Java, which could have been Australia. It is possible that the Portuguese charted Australia’s east coast early in the 1500s. But the first recorded date for a European sighting of Australia is 1606.

In 1606 a Dutch expedition led by Willem Jansz entered the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia and sailed along the west coast of Cape York Peninsular. The same year the Spaniard Pedro Fernandez de Quiros discovered the islands of the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). Thinking that these islands were the great south land, Quiros named them Australia del Espiritu Santo (Southland of the Holy Spirit).

For the next 100 years Europe’s knowledge of Australia came from the Dutch. Holland had established trading posts in Java to exploit the spice trade. In 1611 it was proved that ships could sail east after rounding the Cape of Good Hope and then north towards Java.

The most significant of the Dutch expeditions were those led by Abel Tasman. In 1642 the governor of the Dutch colonies Anthony van Diemen instructed Tasman to find a route from the Cape of Good Hope to South America using the wind system known as the “roaring forties”. On November 24 Tasman sighted the island now named Tasmania. He sailed around the southern part of the island and claimed it for Holland. Then he turned eastward, discovering the South Island of New Zealand. In 1644 he charted the northern coast of Australia and named the land New Holland.

The Dutch found the continent harsh and forbidding. It offered few opportunities for trade, and they lost interest in it. But their expeditions had roughly mapped the continent’s northern, western and southwestern coastlines, though maps drawn at the time still showed the east coast extending to New Zealand and beyond.

The one-time English buccaneer William Dampier, who searching for new British trade routes in the Pacific, visited the northwestern coast of Australia in 1688 and again in 1699. He was appalled by the ugly landscape of the coast, the fruitless trees, naked savages. The British had also shown little interest in the continent. Dampier’s views of the country were as negative as those of the Dutch. However, Dampier was the first to describe the Aborigines’ communal life. But the continent lay undisturbed in its dreamtime for another century.

James Cook’s Expedition

In 1768 the British Admiralty appointed Captain James Cook to sail an expedition led by Joseph Banks to Tahity. The stated purpose of the journey, at the request of the Royal Society, was to observe the transit of the planet Venus. But Cook was also ordered, in secret instructions, to find and take possession of the southern continent. Having fulfilled his duties in Tahity Cook sailed south to New Zealand, sailing around the two islands and proving that they were not part of the continent. He spent six months there to chart both islands.

From Tahity Cook sailed east and on April 19, 1770 sighted the east coast of Australia. On April 28 his ship Endeavour sailed into Botany Bay near Sydney. Natives, who had gathered on the headland and shores, brandished their spears angrily, or otherwise ignored the strangers.

The Endeavour stayed a week at Botany Bay . The bay left an unforgettable impression on Banks and his expedition. No naturalists before or since Banks have ever collected in such a short time so many new specimens of plants, bird and animal life. Because of the discoveries of this expedition Cook named the place Botany Bay.

Sailing north, Cook sighted and named, but did not enter, Port Jackson, Sydney’s great harbor. On June 10, Cook’s ship struck a reef that was part of the Great Barrier Reef. Ship repairs were made in the mouth of a river in northern Queensland. The river received the name of the ship. In August 1770 Cook reached Cape York and claimed the east coast of the continent for Britain. He named it New South Wales.

Cook’s view of the continent differed from the views of the Dutch and Dampier. Instead of a hostile desert country he found a country where he believed crops would grow and farm animals could thrive. He gave a classic description of the “noble savage “… in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted with not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe… ,the Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life…”

On his arrival in London in 1771 Cook reported to the Admiralty what he had found. The Admiralty was not convinced and sent him out again.

During his second voyage of 1772-1775 Cook finally destroyed the historical myth of the Great South Land by using the westerly winds to circumnavigate the Antarctic continent. Thus he showed that the unknown southland did not exist and that the known southland of New Holland (Australia) did exist.

Cook’s third voyage of 1776-1779 was less significant for Australia and turned to fatal to himself. It ended with his death in the Hawaii Islands which he had discovered. Having secured some of the most important geographic and scientific information in history, Captain James Cook, this

Self-educated genius of navigation, revolutionized sea journeys by the use of longitudinal calculation and an anti-scurvy diet.

First Convict Settlement

The first settlement of convicts in New South Wales was founded by Captain Arthur Phillip on the bay where Sydney is now located, in 1788. Captain Phillip described Sydney Harbor as “the finest harbor in the world” .

There is an interesting relationship between Australia and the American colonies. Captain Cook had visited the new continent a few years before the War of Independence (1775-1783). At that time England was too busy in North America to worry about faraway Australia. It was only after the American colonies had won independence that England began to be interested in New South Wales.

Until the American Revolution the American colonies had been the major recipient of Britain’s convicts. Britain’s jails and hulks became overcrowded with prisoners and a new place for the transportation of convicts was required. The site had to be an isolated place to prevent any escapees from returning home. It also had to have land capable of supporting agriculture, so that the colony could provide its own food. Although sites were examined in Africa, Joseph Banks’ praise of Botany Bay swung the decision in favour of Australia.

During the next four years Captain Philip and his convicts had a difficult time. They had to struggle against starvation. However, for many years most of the settlers arriving in Australia were convicts.

The arrival of European settlers in Australia changed the Aboriginal lifestyle in a way which had a devastating effect. As the early colonial settlements expanded, taking the most fertile areas of land, the nomadic way of traditional Aboriginal life was disrupted. Forceful measures were taking by white settlers to their quest for development. Tribes, clans and families were dispersed simultaneously with the seizure of land. In 1788 the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. Arthur Philip, the commander of the fleet, became the first Governor of the colony. When Captain Philip landed with his soldiers and convicts, it was estimated that 300,000 Aboriginal people lived across the continent. By the beginning of the 20^th century the Aboriginal population had been reduced to about 60,000 and many of the tribal languages lost. In 1788 Sydney was founded.

In 1803 Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) was founded as a penal colony.

Explorations

Chief land explorations were carried out in the 19^th century. In1813 the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, were explored and crossed by an expedition led by William Charles Wentworth, Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson. This opened a new grazing land and brought new settlers.

During the 1830s and 1840s explorers pushed further inland opening up new pastoral country and filling in the blanks on the map. The explorer Thomas Mitchell made some of the most significant discoveries. In 1836 Mitchell discovered the rich pastoral land of western Victoria. In 1845 and 1846 he discovered the pastoral land of the Maranoa and Barcoo rivers.

By 1836 the vast river system of the southeastern continent had been charted. Tasmania had been explored and the genocide of its natives had begun. A decade later most of New South Wales, half of Queensland, and the southern and northern coasts had been substantially explored. In 1860 the continent was first crossed from south to north by the explorers R. Burke and W. Wills. It was a well-equipped team and a camel train, especially imported from Afghanistan for the journey. John Forest was the first to cross the continent from west to east in 1874.

The determined settlers began to expand their frontiers. Explorers, often with farmers close behind them, eager for new sheep and cattle pastures, pushed into the unknown area of the continent. But their efforts were not always rewarded. Most of the interior was without water. Early explorers believed that the westward-flowing rivers of New South Wales led toward a vast inland sea, which proved to be mythical.

Most of the explorers confirmed the sad fact that here was an inside-out continent; its best lands were around its coasts. Huge areas of central and western Australia remained untouched and unclaimed by settlers. The heart of the continent is so dry, so hot, still so unexplored, that it is almost empty. Exploration in Australia will probably never end.

While explorers disappeared for months or forever into the great interior of Australia, the settlers, they left behind, continued to push their way towards a better society.