AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

The first people to settle in Australia are believed to have arrived some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and migrated throughout the country, including Tasmania and many other smaller islands. Aboriginal culture developed in relative isolation from the rest of the world, although populations in the north are known to have traded locally with the inhabitants of the Pacific islands and what is now Indonesia.

During the European expansion of the 17th and 18th centuries, Dutch and Portuguese traders partly mapped the west and north of the continent. It is believed they landed occasionally to explore and collect fresh water, but generally found the desert landscape of the North West unappealing and left the land well alone.

In 1770 Captain James Cook mapped almost the entire east coast of Australia during a four month journey. On 22 August 1770, at Possession Island off the coast of what is now Queensland, he claimed eastern Australia for King George III.

By the late 18th century, Britain's prisons were full to overflowing as America had refused to be used as a penal colony since the War of Independence (1776-1783). The new land in the south offered a prime alternative and in 1788 Britain sent its first fleet of convicts to Australia.