continent, the island of Tasmania, and various smaller islands. it's the most important country in Oceania and therefore the world's sixth-largest
major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.
Indigenous Australians inhabited the continent for about 65,000 years before the primary arrival of Dutch explorers within the early
17th century, who named it New Holland. In 1770, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain and initially settled
through penal transportation to the colony of latest South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national
day. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the time of an 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been
explored and a further five self-governing crown colonies established. On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated,
forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic form of government that
functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories.
Australia is that the oldest, flattest and driest inhabited continent, with the smallest amount fertile soils. it's a landmass of . A megadiverse
country, its size gives it a good sort of landscapes, with deserts within the centre, tropical rainforests within the north-east and
mountain ranges within the south-east. Its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among rock bottom within the
world.
Australia may be a highly developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy. it's a high-income economy, with the world's
tenth-highest per capita income. it's a regional power and has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the
world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 29% of the population. Having the third-highest
human development index and therefore the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks highly in quality of life, health,
education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative
livability surveys. Australia may be a member of the United Nations , G20, Commonwealth of countries , ANZUS, Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands
Forum, and therefore the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism.
Name
The name Australia springs from the Latin Terra Australis, a reputation used for a hypothetical continent within the Southern
Hemisphere since past . When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia within the 17th century, the name Terra
Australis was naturally applied to the new territories.
Until the first 19th century, Australia was best referred to as "New Holland", a reputation first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel
Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, like in scientific texts. The name
Australia was popularised by the explorer Flinders , who said it had been "more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to
the names of the opposite great portions of the earth". Several famous early cartographers also made use of the word Australia on
maps. Gerard Mercator used the phrase climata australia on his double cordiform map of the planet of 1538, as did Gemma
Frisius, who was Mercator's teacher and collaborator, on his own cordiform wall map in 1540. Australia appears during a book on
astronomy by Cyriaco Jacob zum Barth published in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1545.
The first time that Australia appears to possess been officially used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie
acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to
the Colonial Office that it's formally adopted. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially by
that name. the primary official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the
Hydrographic Office.
Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under" . Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land",
"the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", and "the Wide Brown Land". The latter two both derive from Dorothea
Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country".
History
Indigenous peoples
Human habitation of the Australian continent is understood to possess begun a minimum of 65,000 years ago, with the migration of individuals by
land bridges and short sea-crossings from what's now Southeast Asia . The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is
recognised because the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia. The oldest human remains found are the Lake Mungo
remains, which are dated to around 41,000 year's ago. These people were the ancestors of recent Indigenous Australians.
Aboriginal Australian culture is one among the oldest continual civilisations on earth.
At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies.
Recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 750,000 could are sustained. Indigenous Australians have an oral
culture with spiritual values supported reverence for the land and a belief within the Dreamtime. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically
Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and therefore the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts
and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by Makassan fishermen from what's now Indonesia.
European arrival
The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and therefore the first recorded European landfall on the Australian
continent, are attributed to the Dutch. the primary ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was
the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and
made landfall on 26 February at the Pennefather River near the fashionable town of Weipa on Cape York . Later that year, Spanish
explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, Torres Strait islands. The Dutch charted the entire of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent "New Holland" during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement.)
and again in 1699 on a return trip. In 1770, Cook sailed along and mapped the East Coast , which he named New South
Wales and claimed for nice Britain.
With the loss of its American colonies in 1783, British Government sent a fleet of ships, the "First Fleet", under the
command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to determine a replacement penal institution in New South Wales. A camp was found out and therefore the flag raised
at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788, a date which later became Australia's national day, Australia Day. A British
settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land, now referred to as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825.
The uk formally claimed the western a part of Western Australia 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 had been excised from South Australia . South Australia was founded as a "free province" — it had been never a penal
colony. Victoria and Western Australia were also founded "free", but later accepted transported convicts. A campaign by the
settlers of latest South Wales led to the top of convict transportation thereto colony; the last convict ship arrived in 1848.
The indigenous population declined for 150 years following settlement, mainly thanks to communicable disease . Thousands more died
as a results of frontier conflict with settlers. A government policy of "assimilation" beginning with the Aboriginal Protection Act
1869 resulted within the removal of the many Aboriginal children from their families and communities — mentioned because the Stolen
Generations — a practice which also contributed to the decline within the indigenous population. As a results of the 1967 referendum,
the Federal government's power to enact special laws with reference to a specific race was extended to enable the making of laws
with reference to Aboriginals. Traditional ownership of land wasn't recognised in law until 1992, when the supreme court of
Australia held in Mabo v Queensland that the legal doctrine that Australia had been terra nullius didn't 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 pasture within the south of the colony, and also to seek out a solution to the mystery of where New South Wales' western
rivers flowed. In 1826, British claim was extended to the entire Australian continent when Major Edmund Lockyer
established a settlement on King George Sound . By 1850, large areas of the inland were still unknown to Europeans, but
explorers remained ambitious to get new lands for agriculture or answer scientific enquiries.
A gold rush began in Australia within the early 1850s and therefore the Eureka Rebellion against mining licence fees in 1854 was an early
expression of direct action . Between 1855 and 1890, the six colonies individually gained responsible government,
managing most of their own affairs while remaining a part of British Empire. The Colonial Office in London retained control
of some matters, notably foreign affairs, defence, and international shipping.
Nationhood
On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved after a decade of designing , consultation and voting. This established
the Commonwealth of Australia as a dominion of British Empire. The Federal Capital Territory was formed in 1911 because the
location for the longer term federal capital of Canberra. Melbourne was the temporary seat of state from 1901 to 1927 while
Canberra was being constructed. The Northern Territory was transferred from the control of the South Australian government to
the federal parliament in 1911.
In 1914, Australia joined Britain in fighting war I, with support from both the outgoing Commonwealth Liberal Party and
the incoming Australian Labour Party . Australians took part in many of the main battles fought on the Western Front. Of about
416,000 who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded. Many Australians regard the defeat of the
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli because the birth of the state — its first major action . The Kokoda
Track campaign is regarded by many as a similar nation-defining event during war II
0 comments: