History of Australia

from the beginning

to 1792
GFS IN ENGLISH//2018

Baris Aktas
Realschule Rottweil Englischunterricht Klasse 9C
2018 2019 Frau Stumm 09.11.2018
 Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents
Pre-European history of Australia ________________________________________________ 1

The arrival of the first Europeans _________________________________________________ 2

The British get to Australia _______________________________________________________ 3

Australia- The UKs new prison ____________________________________________________ 4

Sources ________________________________________________________________________ 6
Page 01 Pre-European history of Australia

Pre-European history of Australia

The journey of the first Aborigines
The ancestors of the Australian Aboriginals were one of the first groups of people
that left their home in Africa in search of a new homeland. They did this at some
point from 65,000 to 49,000 years ago. After walking along on the south coast of Asia
they hopped from island to island until they arrived in New Guinea and Australia.
About 50,000 years ago the water levels were lower than today. That meant that
New Guinea and Australia were one island together. The land in between was
called Sahul. The Aborigines traveled along the coast of Australia until they found
the Ayers Rock also called Uluru, in the middle of Australia. The Anangu people, a
group of Aborigines, settled there.

How did the Aborigines live?

The Aborigines and other people at that time were hunters and gatherers.
That meant that they just ate what they found. For example, the Aboriginal women
and children searched fruits and nuts they could eat. The Aboriginal men searched
animals like fish, kangaroos, and emus to hunt them with their spears. They ate
everything raw because they didn’t know that they could cook their food.

Most Aborigines lived in caves that were in the bush. The bush at the time was full of
bananas, coconuts and many types of berries and fruits.

About 100 years ago the Aborigines started to farm. This changed the way how the
Aborigines lived throughout the years. Fewer people died of hunger and more
people did get out from the bush to populate the coasts of Australia. The bush
slowly died, and the coast got livelier.

The religion of the Aborigines

The Aborigines are very religious. Every group of Aborigines believes in another
figure. Some people pray to a rock or a mountain and some pray to their ancestors
or a plant. But most of them believe in the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is the time
where the first people formed the land and gave life to the people, plants, and
animals.
 Page 02 The arrival of the first Europeans

The arrival of the first Europeans

The first European to see Australia
For a very long time, Europeans believed that there was a continent in the southern
hemisphere which they called Terra Australia Incognita, which means Unknown
South Land in English. The people who named Australia took that name, but they
didn’t know that Antarctica was the land they were looking for

The first European to set foot in Australia was the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon. He
landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula in 1606 with his ship Duyfken.
Cape York Peninsula is on the north of the Australian state Queensland.

After Willem Janszoon, many Dutch explorers sailed along the western, northern and
southern coastline but not on the eastern coastline. But later on, in 1770 James Cook
was the first explorer to land on the east coast. He had brought maps of the north,
west and south coasts from the earlier Dutch explorers.

Captain James Cook

James Cook was a captain in the Royal Navy. He also was a navigator and a
cartographer. He was born in the 7th of November 1728 and died on the 14th of
February 1779 at the age of 50.
Captain James Cook
He was the first European to ever have set foot on the eastern coast of Australia and
he was also the first European to set foot on the Hawaiian Islands.

He arrived on the east coast of Australia in his first voyage on the 19 th of April 1770
after he had made a map of the coastline of New Zealand.

On the 23rd of April, he wrote in his journal, that the people on the beach on the east
coast in Australia had skin that was very dark or black, but he did not know if that
were their clothes or their actual skin.

Their ship, the HMS Endeavour, was damaged, and they had to stay longer to repair
their ship. Many of the crew were bitten by mosquitoes that carried the malaria virus
and about 30 of the crew died because of the disease.

HMS Endeavour He claimed the land on the east of Australia for the UK and he named it New South
Wales.

Captain James Cook and his crew arrived back in England about a year later.
Page 03 The British get to Australia

The British get to Australia

The first settlers
The British were happy because they knew that the native inhabitants wouldn’t mind
the Europeans settling there. The first settlers soon discovered that this new continent
was not a good place to live in because the Aborigines did not have houses that
the British could take over. The weather was too hot for the settlers, the lakes would
evaporate, and they had to travel to the coast again to get water. They didn’t find
any natural resources like gold or iron to send back to England. There was no reason
to colonize Australia because it was too remote and empty.

They went back to England not even a year later.

The British government had the idea to send some convicts to Australia and
cultivate the place.
Page 04 Australia- The UKs new prison

Australia- The UKs new prison

Why was Australia used as a prison?
Before the American Revolution (1775-1783) the British government sent their
British-American convicts to the island Newfoundland (next to Canada to the east).
After the American Revolution, they needed another place to send the convicts to,
so the British government had the idea to send convicts from Newfoundland and
the UK to Australia.

The First Fleet

11 ships sailed away from Portsmouth, England to Botany Bay, Australia.

The First Fleet left England on 13

May 1787. The journey took 252
days or about 8 months. The First
Fleet had 3 stops at Santa Cruz,
Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town to
get food and water. The fleet
arrived in Botany Bay on 18th
January 1788.

Some convicts tried to rebel against the guards but were caught. Almost all
the convicts behaved.

The ships were very dirty and full of mice and bugs. On the second stop at
Rio de Janeiro, the 11 ships were cleaned, and the convicts got new clothes
and more food was taken on board.

At the third stop in Cape Town on 13th October, the crew bought some
plants, seeds and 2 bulls, 7 cows, 1 stallion, 3 mares, 32 pigs, 4 goats, and 44
sheep.

About a month later on the 12th November, they left Cape Town and sailed 2
months to get to Australia. A few ships arrived 2 weeks earlier and they
started building a shelter for the convicts.
Page 05 Australia- The UKs new prison

Admiral Arthur Phillip

Arthur Phillip was born on 11th October 1738 in London, England. He was an officer at
the Royal Navy and he was the first Governor of New South Wales.

Phillips was on board on the First Fleet. The home secretary Lord Sydney chose him to
be the new Governor of New South Wales.

Arthur Phillip made New South Wales with help of the British government to a
functioning state with rules and economy.

What did he do?

Arthur Phillip was very democratic, and he listened to the new settlers and
respected everyone. Arthur Phillip change the destination from Botany Bay to
Sydney Cove because there was no drinkable water there. He made Australia
livable for the next people that would come to Australia.

He was the governor from 1788 to 1792 and he died 1814 in the French napoleotic
wars.
Page 06 Sources

Sources

Australian National Library

Copyrightless Media

Wikipedia