Australia Flag on our Flagpole

Australia

Captain James Cook
Captain James Cook

With the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the “First Fleet“, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the flag raised at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia’s national day, Australia Day. A British settlement was established in Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825.

Tasmania's Port Arthur Penal Settlement
Tasmania’s Port Arthur Penal Settlement

The United Kingdom formally claimed the western part of Western Australia (the Swan River Colony) in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia. South Australia was founded as a “free province” — it was never a penal colony. Victoria and Western Australia were also founded “free”, but later accepted transported convicts. A campaign by the settlers of New South Wales led to the end of convict transportation to that colony; the last convict ship arrived in 1848.

The indigenous population, estimated to have been between 750,000 and 1,000,000 in 1788, declined for 150 years following settlement, mainly due to infectious disease. Thousands more died as a result of frontier conflict with settlers. A government policy of “assimilation” beginning with the Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 resulted in the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families and communities — often referred to as the Stolen Generations — a practice which may also have contributed to the decline in the indigenous population. As a result of the 1967 referendum, the Federal government’s power to enact special laws with respect to a particular race was extended to enable the making of laws with respect to Aborigines. Traditional ownership of land (“native title“) was not recognised in law until 1992, when the High Court of Australia held in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) that the legal doctrine that Australia had been terra nullius (“land belonging to no one”) did not apply to Australia at the time of British settlement.

Colonial Expansion:

In 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, opening the interior to European settlement. In 1824, Hamilton Hume and former Royal Navy Captain William Hovell led an expedition to find new grazing land in the south of the colony, and also to find an answer to the mystery of where New South Wales’ western rivers flowed. In 1826, the British claim was extended to the whole Australian continent when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement on King George Sound (modern-day Albany). By 1850, large areas of the inland were still unknown to Europeans, but explorers remained ambitious to discover new lands for agriculture or answer scientific enquiries.

Blue Mountains
Blue Mountains
Scroll to Top