Some Australian History

1. Discovery and colonisation  

British settlers arrival

When the European settlers first arrived in Australia they didn't discovered an empty island. In the contrary they found an inhabited Australia. Indeed, the Arboriginal Australians are believed to be the first inhabitants of the country, arriving from the Mainland by sea thousands of years ago, although no one new about this portion of land. The first one to discover it and to share there knowledge with the rest of the World was Willem Janszoon (1570-1630), a Dutch Navigator and colonial governor who served in the Netherlands East Indies during his life. He is the first European setller known to have see the coast of Australia during his voyage of 1605-1606. However, he never landed. After him many other explorers followed, but the best-known of them all is Lieutnant James Cook, a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain of the Royal Navy. He is the one the one, who in 1770, charted the Australian East coast, and claimed it under instruction of King George III of England on the 22nd of August 1770. He sailed to this island thanks to his ship: HM Barque Endeavour. He is also the one who renamed this region as "New South Wales".

Captain Cook

However, the first act of colonization was made by captain Atrhur Philip, with a first fleet of  11 ships and about 1,350 people arriving at Botany Bay between the 18th and the 20th of January 1788. But as the place could not suit for the settlement of the troups, they moved North to Port Jackson six days later, landing at Camp Cove. Now governor of New South Wales, he is the one who led the colonization of Australia and founded the British penal colony that later became Sydney. As this first fleet was under preparated for the such an extended task, the setllers soon run out of supplies. They survived by tryiing to develop farms, but also by trading food and other supplies with the local arboriginal clans.
In 1790, a second fleet arrived, providing the badly needed supplies to the first setllers. But with the foof and supplies, it also brought convicts, many of who were too ill or too dead for providing any help to the new colony. Indeed, this second fleet is known as the "Death Fleet", as 278 people (convicts and crew members) died during the voyage.

The first fleet & the British colony

The colonization wasn't at first supposed to be violent, as the settlers from the firt fleet needed arboriginal help. Both setllers and indegenous people cohexisted quite peacefully trading and helping each other. But as the second fleet arrived, the arborigenes realised that their land and ressources on which they depended and the order of their lifes were being too badly disrupted by the presence of the white setllers, the relations between explorers and arboriginals became hostile. A campaign of resistance against the English colonisers was undertook by different clans of natives between 1790 and 1810.

Arborigenes massacred by the setllers