Prehistory:
Early exploration, settlements and the colonial battle to claim New Holland
New Holland becomes Australia under British rule
The gold rush and rapid population expansion

Australian history up to 1900

Prehistory:

see also How Australia evolved in geological terms and evolution
it appears, Australia became separated from the super-continent of Gondwanaland some 80 million years ago.
the 1st Australians arrived by sea from the Ice Age subcontinent Sundaland, in SE Asia, via the islands in between the two great land masses more than 40,000 yrs ago.
- it is thought that two racial groups migrated from SE Asia:
  - the Australoids went to New Guinea, Australia & Melanesia
  - the Mongoloids went to Micronesia & Polynesia
30,000 years ago, seems Aboriginal peoples at Cuddie Falls, NSW were grinding grain to make flour and perhaps baking a type of bread
23,000-18,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, again during the Antarctic Cold Reversal (ACR) (14,500–12,500yrs ago), most of Australia was uninhabitable, forests disappeared, many animals went extinct, and almost all people migrated into smaller areas, abandoning as much as 80% of the continent, while birth rate are likely to have decined by 60%. Examples are Lawn Hill Gorge, NW Qld; ¹⁾
15,000yrs ago, Brewarrina fish traps
DNA studies in 2014-15 appear to show 11% of current aboriginal DNA is of Indian origin which suggests a wave of Indian people came by boat around 4,230 years ago and may have brought dingos with them as well as new plant processing and stone tool technologies, with microliths appearing for the first time.
the Aboriginals:
- formed hunter-gatherer societies based on a complex network of kinship throughout Australia including Tasmania
- as flint & similar fine-grained rocks were rare, they used quartz or quartzite for most of the stone tools
- formed a profound spiritual relationship with land and sea manifested in a system of beliefs called the Dreaming which encompassed the past, present & future.
- they developed ways of managing the land such as controlled burning to improve sustainable food supplies
Australia's most important prehistoric Aboriginal sites:
- Kenniff Cave - central Qld - 16,000-19,000 yr old remnants
- Koonalda Cave - far western Sth Aust - markings 20,000-25,000yrs old
- Devon Downs - Murray River Sth Aust - 4,000 yrs old
- Puritjarra - NT - 22,000 yrs old
- Talgal - Darling Downs, Qld - 12,000yr old skull disc. in 1886 & presented at a scientific meeting in 1914
- Cave Bay cave - NW Tas - 23,000yrs old
- Lake Mungo - western NSW - 40,000yrs old, world's oldest cremation - 25,000yrs old.
- Western Arnhem Land - Kakadu, NT - possibly even back to 60,000yrs ago
- Kow Swamp - near Echuca, Vic - 1st Pleistocene Australians found in burial ground
- Macassan sites - northern coastline - abandoned trepang (sea cucumber) processing sites created by Indonesian Muslim Macassans fishermen over the past 1000 yrs, indicating a continuous flow of people, ideas & material items that have entered Australia for tens of thousands of years. This trepang is thought to have supplied a quarter of the total Chinese market by the mid-nineteenth century. Matthew Flinders in 1803 identified this trade roue and called channel of water the Malay Road. The trade network was shut down after the 1906-07 season by the South Australian government (which administered the Northern Territory at the time) which refused to allow licences to non-Australian operators.
early European sightings of Australia commenced around 1601

Early exploration, settlements and the colonial battle to claim New Holland

colonial powers only wish to take possession of foreign lands if either:
- there is likely to be profit - agriculture, commerce or industry - and until Hume and Hovell found good land for agriculture in 1825, New Holland was not seen as being profitable
- as a solution to housing of convicts
- to prevent other colonial powers taking possession as foreign lands often became pawns in a battle for power
in the late 18th century, the French expeditions were more about scientific discovery rather than foreign possessions given the turmoils of the French Revolution and the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment
- Baudin's letter to Gov King in Sydney highlighted this “To my way of thinking, I have never been able to conceive that there was justice or even fairness on the part of Europeans in seizing, in the name of their governments, a land seen for the first time, when it is inhabited by men who have not always deserved the title of savages or cannibals.” Despite this, Napoleon apparently had greater aspirations for possession.
in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Britain had the strongest naval fleet which allowed them to become the main global imperial power

1606: Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon first landed in Australia and dubbed it New Holland
1642: Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sights Tasmania and names it Van Dieman's Land after his patron, Anthony van Diemen. He then sailed north east, and was the first European to discover the west coast of New Zealand, which he named Staten Landt. It was later renamed Nieuw Zeeland, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, by Joan Blaeu, official Dutch cartographer to the Dutch East India Company. He failed to make any significant contact with the native inhabitants or establishing any trade relations (there was a violent confrontation in NZ).
1688: Englishman William Dampier came ashore north of Broome
1768, Frenchman Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, had his ship’s westward passage blocked by the outer shoals of the Great Barrier Reef
1770: Capt. James Cook discovers Australia's east coast & claims it for England
1772: Frenchmen, Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne visited Tasmania and stayed briefly with the Indigenous people, while off the far north-west coast, Francois de Saint-Alouarn buried two bottles containing statements of proclamation on Dirk Hartog Island, one of which was found in 1998.
1776: US declaration of independence after war with Britain
1788: penal colony founded Sydney by Capt Arthur Phillip - The First Fleet; six days later, two French vessels under the command of Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse - both ships were wrecked in Solomon Islands and the crew lost; La Perouse lands in Sydney;
1789: Washington elected 1st President of the USA - the US would soon try to take King Island in Bass Strait which was discovered by Bass in 1798
1789: an outbreak of what apparently was smallpox Devil Devil is thought to have killed around half the indigenous population around Sydney cove in early 1789 with bodies seen floating in Sydney Harbour and documented by Vice Admiral John Hunter and Marines Officer Watkin Tench. Not clear if it came from First Fleet (no known active cases), French ships led by La Perouse in early 1788 but long period between arrival and outbreak, or from Aboriginal trade with the Makassar tribes from the island of Sulawesi, now in Indonesia, but no evidence to support this.
1789: mutiny on the Bounty
1795: Flinder's 1st voyage to Australia in the Reliance
1795: Ceylon surrendered to the British by the Dutch
1796: my great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Captain John Brabyn brings a ship load of convicts to the new penal colony
1797: merino sheep introduced into Australia by John MacArthur
1798: Britain has ongoing issues: Battle of the Nile; Irish rebellion; then Napoleon becomes 1st Consul of the French Republic, Battle of Marengo in 1800, Battle of Copenhagen in 1801; Peace of Amiens 1802;
1798: George Bass discovers King Island and Westernport Bay; Flinders and Bass circumnavigate Van Dieman's Land in the Norfolk. Flinders took along a sole indiegnous person, Bungaree, or Boongaree (1775 – 1830), who played important roles throughout Flinder's subsequent circumnavigation of Australia. Bungaree later became well known in Sydney, his distinctive outfits and notoriety within colonial society, as well as his gift for humour and mimicry, especially his impressions of past and present governors, made him a popular subject for portrait painters, with eighteen portraits and half a dozen incidental appearances in wider landscapes or groupings of figures.

His were among the first full-length oil portraits to be painted in the colony, and the first to be published as a lithograph.

1800: the only part of Australasia occupied by white people was Norfolk Island and the small area at Port Jackson shut in between the sea and a precipitous range of mountains that for thirteen years to come presented an unconquerable barrier to inland exploration - population was ~5,000 half of whom were soldiers, officials, and free people, the remainder were convicts including Irishmen transported for their part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
1800: the un-reluctant retro-cession of Cape of Good Hope by the British to the Dutch highlights the lack of concern Britain really had for the possession of New holland at this time as possession of the Cape was important if maintenance of possession of New Holland was considered important given the critical importance of that port
1800: England vs France in fight to claim New Holland. Napoleon, at the height of the war with England, in an attempt to possibly claim the west part of “New Holland”, sends Baudin to lead a team of scientists. England responds in 1801 by sending Flinders to circumnavigate “New Holland” in the Investigator. Grant reaches Port Jackson in the Lady Nelson.
1801: Baudin reaching SW corner New Holland in winter, decided to go north instead of facing the south coast in winter & navigates the west coast of New Holland. Running out of water & developing scurvy, in August 1801, he is forced to head to West Timor, but his men then developed fatal attacks of dysentery. After 3 months in Timor, he then continues back south, unaware of passing Flinders, and by Jan 1802 reaches Van Dieman's Land, after passing around its south, sailing up its east coast, he then turns west to pass through Bass Strait where he is the 1st European to see the southern coast of western Victoria & then encounters Flinders in Sth Australia's Encounter Bay.
c1801-1802:
- ‘The French’ on French island make a treaty with the indigenous peoples that covered hunting and fishing rights in Western Port including an area from Wilson’s prom to near Berwick
- The coast line from Wilson’s Prom to near Esperance in WA was a recognised colonial claim of France: Terre Napoleon until 1824.²⁾
1801: Flinders, in a leaking ship, arrives on SW corner of New Holland near where Baudin had reached, but as it is now summer, he heads east and lands in Port Jackson colony. He then circumnavigated Australia anti-clockwise in his deteriorating ship losing 11 men before reaching Port Jackson again. Flinders, returning to Europe is shipwrecked and had to row 600 miles back to Port Jackson, before resuming his voyage.
1802: Baudin's crew on Le Geographe arrive off Port Jackson nearly all with severe scurvy - very few were to survive.³⁾
1802: Murray discovers Port Phillip Bay with my great, great, great, great grandmother's 13yr old brother, John Frederick Brabyn
1803: war again breaks out between Britain and France and persists until 1815 and the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo
1803: Flinders, unaware war had broken out again, stopped in French Mauritius for ship repairs en route back to England but was arrested as a spy and detained in prison for nearly 7 years
1803: settlement at Sorrento in Port Phillip Bay established by Governor King to blunt the influence of the French settlement on ‘The island of the French’ in Port de Western, but this settlement failed due o lack of fresh water supply
1803, Van Dieman's Land becomes a British penal colony & soon its Aboriginal population is wiped out by guns & introduced diseases
1803: Freycinet in Spencer's and Vincents Gulfs in Sth Aust
1804, Hobart founded
1805, my great, great, great, great grandfather, Lieutenant Peter Burnett French Mills comes to Australia with Captain Bligh who was involved with the famous mutiny of the Bounty
1806: Britain recaptures the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch - this allowed the British to capture Mauritius from the French to reduce risks in India, as well as dissuade any French attempts of claims on New Holland.
1807: sealer's settlement on King Island ⁴⁾
1808: my great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Captain John Brabyn was one of 6 magistrates involved in the famous “rum rebellion” which imprisoned Gov. Bligh - Australia's 1st and only military coup of the government
1810, Flinder's finally gets back to England and refutes Peron's account of Baudin's expedition;
1811: the French were the 1st to print a near complete of Australia’s coast derived from Nicolas Baudin's explorations in 1801-1804, beating the British by three years and includes the description of “La Terre Napoleon”, covering much of what is now Victoria and South Australia
1814: Flinders book Voyage to Terra Australis is published, Flinders dies of ill health; Napoleon abdicates;
1815: Battle of Waterloo results in Britain defeating Napoleon and France.
1817: Bungaree accompanied Captain Phillip Parker King to north-western Australia in the Mermaid
1817-8, Oxley travels from east coast inland to region of Adelaide
1821: death of Napoleon;
1824, Brisbane founded
1824-25: Hume and Hovell expedition from Sydney to Melbourne and Corio Bay, Geelong
- commissioned by Governor Thomas Brisbane in 1824 to find new grazing lands and determine the course of New South Wales' western rivers
- overland journey from Lake George in New South Wales to Port Phillip Bay in Victoria led to the discovery of fertile lands and the Murray River (originally named the Hume River by Hamilton Hume)
- their expedition paved the way for the settlement of the Port Phillip area, eventually leading to the founding of Melbourne
- disproved the notion that inland Australia was an uninhabitable wilderness, revealing abundant well-watered grazing lands
1825, the new colony of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) separates politically from NSW and although proposed that all islands south of Wilsons Promontory would belong to the new colony of Van Diemen's Land but Governor Ralph Darling, who was overseeing NSW, wanted the border to be more definite and based on inaccurate charts by Capt John Black who in 1801 had surveyed Bass Strait, drew a line at 39 degrees 12 minutes latitude which put the border right through a 2-hectare granite island, Boundary Islet (aka North East Islet Nature Reserve), 56 km southeast of Wilsons Promontory
1825, WA boundary separates British NSW from the essentially unclaimed New Holland following the defeat of France in 1815 by the British
1826: Westernport settlement project abandoned;

New Holland becomes Australia under British rule

1826, England claims all of New Holland under Flinder's suggested name: Australia; penal colony at Albany
1826, my great, great, great grandmother, Eliza Sophia Mills' brothers John & Charles Mills, survive a treacherous voyage in a small boat from Launceston, Tasmania to become the 1st settlers in Victoria (Port Fairy & Portland) where they become whalers and farmers and develop a local legend for their strength, seamanship and for saving lives from ship wrecks in rough seas.
1827, 1st feral rabbits introduced to southern Tasmania (by 1923, Tasmania had exported 68 million rabbit skins in 8yrs, but numbers reduced dramatically after 1954 why myxomatosis was introduced)
1829, Swan River Colony, Perth founded; foundation of Western Australia;
1830's bounty on killing tiger snakes in Tasmania leads to mass killings as there were so many snakes fed by the baby rabbits, and the development of grain production which led to increased mice and rats (the tiger snakes grew to almost 2m long and much fatter) - a bite was likely to be lethal (which resulted in charlatans and those creating extreme 'remedies“) and many were bitten in their attempts to kill them as well as by putting hands in rabbit burrows when hunting for rabbits - it was unsuccessful as millions of snakes are born each year and without large snakes to kill them, they grew up - antivenom became available in 1930s and since 1948 only 3 people have died from snake bites in Tasmania
1830-50: era of the inland explorers - “The Overlanders” and the Squatters taking up farming runs
1828-30, Sturt explores central region of NSW, crossing the Great Divide & discovering fertile plains which would stimulate a sheep & wheat farming industry
1832: English Reform Bill
1834, the start of the illegal colonisation of Victoria Portland, Victoria formally settled illegally (settlements outside the 300km boundary from Sydney outlined by NSW Govt were illegal in the eyes of the British) - and the land was invaded and stolen from the indigenous peoples in a war-like manner including a November 1840 massacre of Aborigines (a massacre is the killing of 6 or more people) by the Henty brothers who find Dutton looking after the whaler's huts belonging to Mills and co.
1834, Pinjarra Massacre - scores of Bindjareb Noongar women, men and children were shot and killed by white settlers in an ambush on the banks of the Murray River, 80 kilometres south of Perth, orchestrated by Captain James Stirling, the first Governor of Western Australia who had founded the Swan River Colony in 1829 and who successfully lobbied the British government to establish a free settlement, which led to the founding of the cities of Perth and Fremantle.
1835, Melbourne founded leading to a rapid expansion of squatter land grabs with over 700 pastoral stations created and at least 49 known massacres of Aborigines in Victoria, killing at least 1045 Aboriginal people of an estimated population of 10,000, mainly in the 1840s and population reduced to around 2000 by the early 1850s - most massacres occurred in SW Victoria where firestick farming had created ideal sheep country. Note prior to the white people arriving it is thought that there were some 60,000 aborigines living in Victoria but contact with whalers or their own peoples from near Sydney spread smallpox decimating their numbers.
1835-6, Mitchell explores south-western region of NSW and travels south to Melbourne region
- At least seven Aboriginal people were shot in the 1836 Mount Dispersion massacre as they tried to flee by swimming across the Murray River
1836, colony of Sth Australia & Adelaide founded
1830's: Britain's loss to the US revolution was to gradually develop a greater tolerance to allowing high levels of self-rule for its colonies such as Canada and Australia
1838: Capt. John Hepburn is the 1st European settler in the Daylesford region in Victoria.
1839: John Brabyn Mills captains the 1st ship to sail from the United Kingdom with immigrants direct to Melbourne instead of Sydney.
1839: one of the main foods of the Indigenous peoples, the yam daisy or murnong, had almost completely disappeared due to sheep, cattle, brumbies and then later this century by the rabbits
1839-41, Eyre travels from Adelaide to Albany
1840, white population reaches 0.2m
1841, Rufus River massacre of over 150, and perhaps 400 Aboriginal peoples west of Mildura defending their Country from police-protected overlanders with their sheep and cattle herds aiming to establish farms in Sth Aust
1842, the wheat-growing colony of Sth Australia of some 7,000 pop. saved from bankruptcy by the discovery huge copper deposits at Kapunda.⁵⁾
1844-5, Sturt explores eastern border region of SA; Leichardt explores Qld & Gulf of Carpenteria coast; Mitchell explores inland NSW/Qld
1845: copper discovered in Burra, SA leading to a mini-boom and became one of the greatest copper producing centres in the world for many years from 1848 onwards, which along with the Kapunda copper mine would help SA govt avoid bankrupcy. The mine was worked by the South Australian Mining Association and its secretary, Henry Ayers, did extremely well and eventually became premier of SA. The mine closed in 1877. ⁶⁾
1847: Earl Grey signs paper abolishing the convict system in NSW.
1847: Ben Boyd a Scottish whaler based near Eden, NSW brought the first 65 Islanders to Australia from the Pacific islands as indentured labourers although they did not understand what they were signing up for and hence many regard it as a form of slavery causing NSW Legislative Council to amend the Masters and Servants Act to ban importation of “the Natives of any Savage or uncivilized tribe inhabiting any Island or Country in the Pacific”.

The gold rush and rapid population expansion

1851: Irish immigrant John Egan finds alluvial gold in Daylesford, Vic instigating a local gold rush, with the area becoming a municipality in 1859 with 3400 gold diggers.
1851, colony of Victoria founded, coinciding the gold rush which resulted in 313,000 new settlers immigrating to Victoria, rapidly outstripping NSW in population & development. In 1852 alone, 86,000 British migrated seeking their fortune.
1853: last consignment of convicts to Australia arrive in Van Diemen's Land, although small numbers continued to arrive in WA until 1868 with 9,700 arriving between 1850-1868).
1854, the Eureka Stockade rebellion of 150 gold miners against armed troopers in Ballarat, Vic. Victoria's 1st census showed 236,798 people living in the colony, 97,943 of these were from England, the next highest countries were Ireland and Scotland.
- Several major Victorian institutions were founded in 1854, including the University of Melbourne, the State Library and the National Museum of Victoria. The Age newspaper was established, and a major international exhibition was held in Melbourne in a purpose-built hall at the corner of William and LaTrobe Streets. The first steam-powered passenger railway in Australia ran from Sandridge (South Melbourne) to Flinders Street, and Railway Pier, later to become Station Pier, commenced its role as the arrival point for many thousands of immigrants.
1855: the Colony of Victoria passed Australia's first immigration act: the Act to Regulate the Residence of the Chinese Population in Victoria.
1860, white population reaches 1.1m
1861: many massacres of indigenous peoples in central and north Qld - some in retribution for a massacre of 19 white sleeping settlers in Cullin-la-ringo including the parents of the co-founder of AFL football, Tom Wills, who fortunately for him was not at camp on the day of the massacre
1861: explorers Burke & Wills disappear exploring the outback trying to find a route from Melbourne to northern coast.
1860's: South Australian explorer Stuart makes six expeditions to finally get to the northern coast from Adelaide to form a route to lay the foundation for Todd's overland telegraph line.
1863: Pacific Island labourers recruited, mainly for cheap, indentured labour on Qld sugar plantations, Australia's closest brush with slavery, by 1904 when it ended, 62,000 had been recruited, mostly from Vanuatu & Solomon Islands
1864: bushranger Frank Gardiner captured;
1865: bushranger 'Mad Dog' Daniel Morgan killed; bushranger Ben Hall killed;
1865: Mitchell River massacre of Aboriginal peoples by the Jardine brothers et al in far Nth Qld
1865: South Australian Surveyor-General George Woodroffe Goyder mapped the boundary between drought-affected country and areas with sufficient rainfall for agriculture Goyder Line - unfortunately for those who ignored him and built farming settlements to the north of this, enticed by it being easier to clear the land and seduced by it being temporarily relatively green, were to have immense hardships in long droughts which would result in these areas becoming ghost towns such as Farina, SA where for a while 50,000 sheep grazed
1868: end of convict transportation to Australia with final tally of some 160,000 convicts since the First Fleet in 1788, most of whom stayed in Australia as were not given the means to return to England after the term of imprisonment was over.
1870, bushranger Capt Thunderbolt shot by troopers
1870's, the boom era of the paddle steamers transporting wool from Darling-Murrumbidgee as far north as Qld border to Echuca on the Murray River which became Australia's largest inland port and 2nd largest port only to Melbourne as it was the closest the Murray came to Melbourne and the Melbourne-Echuca railroad was the 1st to connect a coastal port with the inland wool industry.
1872: Todd's overland telegraph line laid from Adelaide to the north coast and for the first time telegraph wire communications with Europe via Java could be achieved.
1879: bushranger Capt Moonlite's brief career ends in him being hanged in 1880
1880, white population reaches 2.2m; bushranger Ned Kelly hanged for murder of Mounted Constable Thomas Lonigan;
1881, Daylesford, Vic. becomes a fashionable mineral springs spa resort with the arrival of the railroad.
1888, Melbourne becomes the richest city in the world, and the only city to host the World Exhibition twice in the decade, but then general fears of a high influx of immigrants seeking the good life, turns back a boat load of Chinese immigrants leading to the “White Australia Policy” and along with the failure to maintain growth, and the global depression years which followed, soon stagnated for decades to come.
1880's, falling export prices, over-borrowing for expansion, bank failures, & general depression leads to strikes & class bitterness which encourages labour parties into politics.
1890's:
- recession contributes to slowing down of immigration. Many Chinese immigrants begin to return to China (some 100,000 arrived between 1840-90) as the gold rush ended & they became isolated with Victoria introducing a poll tax on new arrivals & creating protectorates.
- NSW once again gains ascendancy over Victoria & the new colony of Queensland.
- WA has a gold rush at Coolgardie attracting migrants mainly from the other colonies.
- small gold mine started in Moppa, SA which helps locals avoid unemployment
1893, votes for women
1894, compulsory industrial arbitration
1898, old age pension
1899, Australia sends troops to Sth Africa for the Boer War
1900, white population reaches 3.8m
1901, Commonwealth of Australia founded; “Federation”, Barton becomes 1st PM