Australia was first inhabited by Indigenous Australians tens of thousands of years ago, but the first documented European discovery was by the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606, who landed on the Cape York Peninsula and charted part of the coast, though he mistook it for New Guinea. Later Dutch explorers mapped much of the continent, calling it "New Holland," followed by English explorers like William Dampier and James Cook, who charted the eastern coast in 1770, leading to British colonization.
In 1606, the crew of Dutch VOC vessel Duyfken, under the command of captain Willem Janszoon, made landfall near Mapoon, on the Cape York Peninsula, and constituted the first recorded contact on Australian soil between the Indigenous people of Australia and Europeans.
The crimes that make up the '19 Crimes' include:
Most of the explorers of this period concluded that the apparent lack of water and fertile soil made the region unsuitable for colonisation.
Before it was called Australia, the continent was known by several names, most prominently New Holland by the Dutch who explored its west coast, and Terra Australis Incognita (Unknown Southern Land) by Europeans dreaming of a great southern continent; the name Australia, derived from the Latin for "southern," was proposed by Matthew Flinders and officially adopted in the 1820s, replacing the older Dutch and British colonial names like New South Wales for the eastern parts.
There were so many different tribes that there wouldn't be one single name. In a lot of the Dreamtime stories that have survived, individual islands have been named, but Australia as a whole tended to be referred to as "the land", rather than having a name.
There of course wasn't much more to discover in Oceania in terms of large landmasses, which is why the British, when they sought to rename New Holland, supposed that "Australia" should be used instead of "New Holland" as the probability of discovering another southern landmass equal in size to Australia, was (at that ...
While the United States (US) is Australia's key strategic ally and often seen as a very close partner by leaders, public opinion polls consistently show New Zealand as Australia's "best friend" in the world, followed by the US and then the United Kingdom, reflecting deep cultural and historical ties with both neighbors.
British settlement of Australia began as a penal colony governed by a captain of the Royal Navy. Until the 1850s, when local forces began to be recruited, British regular troops garrisoned the colonies with little local assistance.
The countries with the most permanent migrants to Australia (excluding those with a humanitarian profile) for 2023–24 are:
Later in our convict history, female convicts would receive other punishments instead of flogging. They could be put in solitary confinement and have only bread and water. They might be forced to wear an iron collar or be relocated to another location which had even harsher conditions.
1. Prisoner AZ-85: Al Capone, America's most famous mob boss. Criminal record: While Al Capone holds the title as Chicago's most notorious mob boss, he's also remembered as a modern-day Robin Hood who was always on the side of “the people.”
Over 160,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies over 80 years. That works out to around 20% of modern Australians having convict ancestry.
The Australian genome clusters together with Highland Papua New Guinea (PNG) samples and is thus positioned roughly between South and East Asians. Apart from the neighboring Bougainville Papuans, the closest populations to the Aboriginal Australian are the Munda speakers of India and the Aeta from the Philippines (Fig.
Aussie slang words and phrases
Ten Pound Poms were required to stay two years or pay back their residual fare which would have been around £120 – a big sum in those days. A lot of people did go home but mine soldiered on.
Explorer Captain James Cook claimed Australia for Britain when he encountered it on April 19, 1770, during his first Pacific voyage. Australia was at that time home to about 750,000 people of more than 500 Indigenous groups. Eighteen years later, Britain began sending convicts and settlers to Australia.
This study confirms Aboriginal Australians as one of the oldest living populations in the world. They are possibly the oldest outside Africa, and they may have the oldest continuous culture on the planet.
The final constitutional ties between the United Kingdom and Australia ended in 1986 with the passing of the Australia Act 1986.
Bilateral relations
Germany is a close and strategic partner for Australia with a common strategic outlook, shared values and a commitment to the rules-based international order, including in the Indo-Pacific.
France is Germany's closest and most important partner in Europe. There is no other country with which we coordinate so regularly and intensively at all political levels and in all areas.
The United Nations process the annual World Happiness Report to understand what happiness is and how it affects our lives, cultures and economy. Australia is ranked under 12, Canada 15 and the United States is 16th and a popular destination for most South Africans, the United Kingdom is 17th.
Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland. Most of the explorers of this period concluded that the apparent lack of water and fertile soil made the region unsuitable for colonisation.
Common nicknames for Australia include "The Land Down Under," "Oz," "Straya," and "The Lucky Country," reflecting its southern location, short-form slang, and fortunate resources/lifestyle. Other poetic names are "The Sunburnt Country" and "The Wide Brown Land," inspired by Dorothea Mackellar's poem.
"Straya" is a colloquial, affectionate, and humorous slang term for Australia, representing a shortened, phonetic pronunciation of the country's name, often used in a casual context to show national identity and a laid-back attitude. It embodies the Australian tendency to shorten words and can be heard in phrases like "G'day, Straya!".