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 only migrating creatures believed to have preceded human arrivals are bats & rodents.

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.

early European sightings of Australia commenced around 1601

1606: Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon first landed in Australia and dubbed it New Holland

1688: Englishman William Dampier came ashore north of Broome

1770: Capt. James Cook discovers Australia's east coast & claims it for England

1788: penal colony founded Sydney by Capt Arthur Phillip - The First Fleet; French ships led by La Perouse in early 1788 land in Sydney;

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.

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

1800: 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”.

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.

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: Murray discovers Port Phillip Bay with my great, great, great, great grandmother's 13yr old brother, John Frederick Brabyn

1803, Van Dieman's Land becomes a British penal colony & soon its Aboriginal population is wiped out by guns & introduced diseases

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

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 and soon dies of ill-health;

1817-8, Oxley travels from east coast inland to region of Adelaide

1824, Brisbane founded

1825, WA boundary separates WA (the former New Holland) from NSW

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, 1t 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, Perth founded

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

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 belong to Mills and co.

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.

1836, colony of Sth Australia & Adelaide founded

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.

1839-41, Eyre travels from Adelaide to Albany

1840, white population reaches 0.2m

1842, the wheat-growing colony of Sth Australia of some 7,000 pop. saved from bankruptcy by the discovery huge copper deposits at Kapunda.¹⁾

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. ²⁾

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”.

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).

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: explorers Burke & Wills disappear exploring the outback trying to find a route from Melbourne to northern coast. 

1860's: South Australian 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;

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 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.

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 1st PM