Australian History UnitOverview

Discovery of Australia

• Willem Jansz, a Dutchman who sailed around part of the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1606

• Dutch sailors called it “New Holland”• Dirk Hartog, 1616 and Abel Tasman in 1642

and 1644• James Cook, an Englishman, the first to sail

along the eastern coast of Australian in 1770

Gulf of Carpentaria

Terra Nullius

• Latin term, meaning “land belonging to no one.”

• How did this help the British to colonise Australia?

• Why did Britain decide to colonise Australia?

Overcrowded prisons in England

The First Fleet

• 1786 – British government named Captain Arthur Phillip as the governor of the new colony in Australia.

• His job was to organise the First Fleet.• The journey from England to Australia took 8

months by ship• 18 January 1788 - The First Fleet arrived in

Botany Bay on.

• “The people were healthy when landed, but scurvy has…appeared amongst them, and now rages in a most extraordinary manner.” Governor Phillip, May 1788

• What do you think the Europeans’ first impressions of Australia would have been?

Convict Life

• Large numbers of convicts (criminals) in Britain at the time due to:– Changing society – Lack of work– No real police force– Alcohol and gambling

In the 1700s, people could be hanged for picking pockets, stealing horses and shoplifting.

Gold Rush

• Gipps, the governor in 1844, told a man who had discovered gold to “Put it away, Mr Clarke, or we shall all have our throats cut.”

• Why didn’t the government want people to know about the discovery of gold?

What would you do for GOLD?

Governor La Trobe said:

• “Within the last 3 weeks, the towns of Melbourne and Geelong and their large suburbs have been almost emptied of the classes of their male inhabitants…

• Cottages are deserted, houses are let, business is at a stand-still, and even schools are closed. In some suburbs, not a man is left.”

• Where have they all gone?

Eureka Rebellion

• 1854 – growing anger on the Ballarat goldfields

• Good was running out• Food and living costs were high• Licence fees were expensive• Diggers felt they did not have a say in

government decisions

• The rebellion was led by Peter Lalor, James McGill and Frederick Vern

• 3 December 1854 – Police launched a surprise attack on the stockade

• 22 diggers were killed, some injured and 100 were locked up – the leaders were charged with treason.

Bushrangers

Federation

• Federation means the joining together of the colonies to form a nation – the Commonwealth of Australia

Why become a Federation?

• At the end of the 1800s, Australia was divided into six separate colonies instead of being one nation.

• But people had been talking for years about whether Australia should be one nation.

• In the 1890s a series of meetings (“conventions” or “conferences”) was held to discuss federation of the colonies.

• The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed on 1 January 1901 at a ceremony at Centennial Park in Sydney.

Australian Government